Wild Starting To Get National Attention

Last night, while I was looking up to see how my march madness bracket was doing (Yes, I filled one out) on ESPN.com, I figured I would click on the NHL tab and see what ESPN had going on. And to my surprise, one of the main tabs on the ESPN/NHL homepage was labeled Minnesota Wild.

And I stumbled upon a post by Pierre LeBrun, which hails the Wild as the team we all thought they would be back in July, and a video from the pride of the ESPN NHL department, Barry Melrose.

An excerpt from LeBrun's post:
"Right now, [Fletcher] sees this a total team effort. Of course the star free agents, Suter and Parise, have been terrific, but everyone is contributing. The goaltending has been strong, the blue line rock solid and the offense -- yes, the offense ! -- has been clicking. 

The key has been the arrival of a second line, mainly featuring Setoguchi and Matt Cullen. While Setoguchi has been on fire, with six goals in his past five games, old man Cullen has been a great story, with 11 points (1-10) in his past 11 games."




Also, the Wild are starting to pick up some notice in Yahoo's Awards Watch, with Suter and Brodin getting nominations for the Norris (League's Best Defenseman) and Calder (League's Best Rookie), respectively.

And finally, Mike Yeo and Chuck Fletcher made appearances on NHL Network this past week to discuss the Wild's current success.

After 5 years of futility, it is finally nice to see the Wild: A) Winning and B) Getting some national coverage. Now that the team had a highly successful 3 game road trip, 2 games coming in places they haven't won since 2006 (Detroit) and 2009 (Vancouver), there will be a lot more eyes watching them. And perhaps, we will continue to read about the Wild on a national level more frequently as well too.

Its kind of a good feeling isn't it?


Follow Giles on Twitter @gilesferrell