Judging from my Twitter mentions last night, many Wild fans wanted Bruce Boudreau to skate the team into oblivion today in Calgary.
If you're one of those fans, you would have been sorely disappointed by today's anticlimactic yet long practice at the Corral.
Instead of punishing his players, the Wild coach decided to actually work – and work a lot – on the areas of the game that have been problems lately.
He said he would have scrapped practice today as a reward if the Wild had won in Vancouver. Instead, the Wild blew a lead for the third time in six games to lose, so he decided to get something out of today's first of two straight practices before Friday's game at Calgary.
It's funny, and Boudreau has brought this up three times in the last week, including after last night's game. He and I got into a slight disagreement on camera in the postgame in Dallas because I felt there were too many odd-man rushes and some bad habits were creeping into the Wild's game that night.
He didn't see it that. We talked about it the next day, he kind of swayed more toward my opinion and now he's completely on board. Odd-man rushes were the focal point of today's 70-plus minute practice.
"As you talked about in Dallas, which I should have seen it coming, I didn't think of it too badly in Dallas, but our odd-man rushes, it's ridiculous how many we've [given up] recently," Boudreau said after practice. "It slides and slides and slides, and then it slides into a problem, and then you have to fix it. And you can fix it through practice."
In practice, the team worked on tracking back, picking up the right man, communicating and not losing the third guy high in the offensive zone in the first place.