After a trembling start to the season, the Minnesota Wild used the month of January to get back on a winning record. Since the all-star break, the team has collected 18 points out of 22 possible, elevating them from the bottom place in the Central Division to the verge of being a playoff candidate.
One does not have to look far to find a reason behind the vast change of performance. It is found between the red pipes, in a recently discovered confidence booster from Regina, Canada: 28 year old goaltender Devan Dubnyk.
“I think it probably starts with him. Just in the sense that he’s making the key save at the key time and he’s got a sense of control and calmness back there that has trickled through to the rest of the group,” Wild coach Mike Yeo said in an interview with TwinCities.com.
Dubnyk entered the 2013-14 season with the Edmonton Oilers. After playing to a save percentage of .891, the worst in the league for any goalie with more than 24 starts, the Oilers decided to let Dubnyk go. Although the Nashville Predators would later pick him up, Dubnyk was left to compete with Finnish Olympic goaltender Pekka Rinne, giving him trouble to find time on the ice. With only two games played for the Predators, averaging a save percentage of .850, he was dropped again, only to be picked up by the Montreal Canadiens AHL affiliate, the Hamilton Bulldogs.
“If you had asked me at the start of that year, ‘What’s the worst thing that could happen?’ I wouldn’t have thought half of that season,” Dubnyk said.
Although Dubnyk was not considered a hot subject during the free agency period last summer, the Arizona Coyotes decided to pick him up and revive him from the AHL swamp where many talented players have seen their careers end. The Coyotes’ Goalie Coach Sean Burke, with history playing for the New Jersey Devils and the Vancouver Canucks in his 18 season long NHL career, saw potential in Dubnyk, something the goaltender considers the turning point of his challenging streak.
“Right from the get-go, he just put so much confidence in me. There’s no words, it’s not like he pumps your tires every day, it’s just the unspoken. You know he’s got your back, you know he believes in you and you know he’ll go to bat for you. It lets you go out there and relax and play,” Dubnyk told NHL.com.
Despite the fact that his confidence was found again, the Coyotes still had veteran Mike Smith in net. Needing to play games to build off of his fresh poise, the move to Minnesota came at the exact right moment, with Backstrom and Kuemper struggling to find stability in their games. In his 14 games with the Wild, Dubnyk has managed to pull off 4 shutouts with a save percentage of .933, a personal record for the goaltender.
“You learn to win in every different kind of way and every different kind of situation. We’ve been doing that through this run here, and it just makes you feel like going into every game like you can win every game. That’s a fun way to play hockey. That’s a really nice feeling, and we’re going to hold onto it and keep working to keep that feeling,” Dubnyk said when questioned by The Globe and Mail.
Time will tell if Dubnyk is up for the task of bringing the Minnesota Wild to the playoffs. With a total of 33 starts as of now, Dubnyk will finish the regular season with over 60 games if he is kept as the Minnesota number one. This is 13 games more than what he recorded when he started the most games in his career, 47, in the 2011-12 season for the Oilers. And if they are successful in reaching the playoffs, Dubnyk will encounter another thing he has never come across before: post-season hockey.
“You learn to win in every different kind of way and every different kind of situation. We’ve been doing that through this run here, and it just makes you feel like going into every game like you can win every game.”—Devan Dubnyk
Devan Dubnyk and the Wild hit the ice again on Fri. 20, at 8 p.m. when they play Western Conference opponents Edmonton Oilers at Rexall Place, Alberta.
-Philip Evans