
In the wake of the Wild's 6-3 meltdown at Dallas on Tuesday, when a 3-0 Minnesota lead late in the second period devolved into a barrage of poor play and bad decisions, the subject of turnovers is both important and complicated.
According to NHL.com, the Wild was credited with 20 giveaways in the game — an extremely high number. In fact, that's the most giveaways the Wild has had in any game since being charged with 21 on March 24, 2015 against the Islanders (a game they actually won).
Mike Yeo was the coach back then, not Bruce Boudreau. And the fourth-year Wild coach was understandably not pleased with how things unfolded Tuesday.
"We have guys that continually give it away," Boudreau said after the game, per our Sarah McLellan. "It creates penalties, it goes the other way and consequently, it's in our net. If we had just kept getting it deep, and checking like we were doing, we would have been fine."
Here's the thing, though: the Wild actually doesn't turn the puck over very much relative to the rest of the league — at least not according to NHL.com's giveaway stats.
Through 12 games this season, Minnesota has committed the fifth-lowest number of giveaways (104) in the league even after Tuesday's debacle. And last year, when the Wild plummeted to last in its division and missed the playoffs after making the postseason six consecutive times, Minnesota had by far the fewest giveaways in the league (517). The next-lowest was Colorado at 595, while the leader, Florida, had 1,234.
That sort of disparity, though, might tell us more just as much about the stat and how it's being tracked as the teams themselves.
Those who follow hockey analytics far more than I do (hat tip in particular to Matthew Coller) suggest that even though there's a basic understanding of what constitutes a giveaway there's a pretty wide variance in how giveaways are charted.