Claimed: Saskatoon's Top Players in Top Form [1/2]

[Eggy216 136]

Saskatoon's Top Players in Top Form

 

 

The Wild celebrate their game one victory over the Lynx. Saskatoon looks to close out the series tonight at home.

 

When your top players are playing like your top players, you're going to see some pretty big successes on the ice - and that's been the story so far through four games for the Saskatoon Wild. The top line of Gabriel McAllister, Jake Scheel, and Daring Do have combined for a total of 14 goals and 29 points, with defenseman Ay Ay Ron adding a goal of his own and 10 points. This is exactly what the team wanted to see heading into the first round of the playoffs, and the fans are certainly excited to see that their success on the ice has led to success in the series, with the Wild sitting on a 3-1 series lead as they head back home to play in front of their own fans.

 

This high scoring play thus far has been backed up by the skilled goaltending of Brienne O'Tarth, who currently sits comfortably with a .866 save percentage and a 3.26 goals against average, giving the Saskatoon Wild the lowest goals against in the league to go along with their playoff-high goals for. Of course these numbers have been helped by the fact that the Wild are second in the league in shots for (32.50) and are far and away the league leaders in shots against with 24.25 - well below the Las Vegas Aces who sit in second with 29.71 shots per game.

 

Unfortunately if there's one area in which the Saskatoon Wild have struggled, it's their penalty kill. While Daring Do has been one of the team's leaders on the ice this postseason, she's also been a leader when it comes to cutting runs to the penalty box with 10 penalty minutes this postseason - tied with Boner for the team lead. Unfortunately, not only has this left the team down a player and down one of their penalty killers, it's also meant a goal against more often than they'd like to see as they are a league-worst 68.75% on the penalty kill this postseason.

 

Luckily the special teams hasn't been all bad for Saskatoon this season - their powerplay is the second best in the league at 26.32%, led by Daring Do's two powerplay goals and Emil Martinov's three powerplay assists. So while the team definitely needs to work more on their penalty killing performance, their powerplay at least helps to make up for some of the goals they're giving up throughout the series.

 

All in all, Saskatoon is peaking at the right team, and the players and fans are hopeful that this can lead to a long postseason and their names engraved on the cup.

[Corco 1,124]

 

[TheLastOlympian07 2,388]

Review

Nice article about Sasky. I hope the team wins if my Aces can't win. Nice to see you keeping active Eggy12. Hope you keep this up because your articles are always good.