As recently as this weekend, the Minnesota Wild’s forward depth looked shaky. The team relied on their top prospects to step up and grab fourth-line jobs. That didn’t happen, and the team sent Tyler Graovac, Alex Tuch, and Sam Anas to Iowa last week.
That left inconsistent scorer Jason Zucker, 19-year-old rookie Joel Eriksson Ek, and marginal prospect Christoph Bertschy on the fourth-line. This was a problem for the team, and especially new coach Bruce Boudreau. With so much inexperience and uncertainty on that line, could one expect Boudreau to roll four lines with confidence?
Minnesota took a step towards shoring up their depth on Tuesday, picking up Teemu Pulkkinen off waivers. The Detroit Red Wings let the 24-year-old winger go after scoring 12 points in 36 games last season. Why?
Part of it is a numbers game. Pulkkinen was part of a glut of players in the Wings system who are in their early-to-mid-20s. Part of it may be the disappointment that stems from Pulkkinen going from dominating the AHL to underwhelming in the NHL. Perhaps they felt his weaknesses, his skating, for example, meant he’d never find his way in Detroit.
But whatever the reason, Pulkkinen has a fresh start in St. Paul, where he’ll effectively take Bertschy’s place.
This feels like an upgrade, one that really solidifies that bottom line into one that has a use. That might be weird to hear, since Pulkkinen isn’t exactly a proven commodity himself.
But he’s clearly a notch above Bertschy — perhaps several notches above. Unlike Bertschy, Pulkkinen has proven himself to be too good for the AHL. Pulkkinen’s last AHL stint saw him rack up a league-leading 34 goals. This is even more impressive when one realizes he did this in just 46 games (AHL seasons are 76 games long).
Will a change of scenery and new coaching help Pulkkinen realize his potential as a top-six goal scorer? It doesn’t really matter. Pulkkinen should help Minnesota out, even if he proves to be more or less the player he was in Detroit.
13 October 2015: Detroit Red Wings forward Teemu Pulkkinen (56) corrals the puck to start an attack. (Photo by Tony Ding/Icon Sportswire)
For one, Pulkkinen looked better than his counting numbers suggested. 11 goals through 70 NHL games doesn’t seem like much, and it’s not. But that doesn’t really account for the ice time he was getting, which was less than 12 minutes a game.
When you look at his rate scoring instead of his raw numbers, it tells a different story. Pulkkinen scored 0.78 goals per 60 minutes at 5-on-5 over the past 3 seasons.
To put that in perspective, Nino Niederreiter scored 0.82 goals per 60 5-on-5 minutes in that span. That 0.78 mark would’ve ranked 4th on the Wild last season. It would seem that Pulkkinen’s ability to score has translated to the NHL.
Furthermore, adding Pulkkinen to Zucker and Eriksson Ek (once the latter gets his immigration issues sorted) gives the fourth line purpose. Instead of a hastily-cobbled together collection of players, they could be a cohesive unit that does one thing extremely well: shoot the puck.
All three of those players have shown to be exceptional shooters at their levels. Zucker has 9.23 shots per 60 minutes at 5-on-5 in his NHL career. Eriksson Ek has been a prolific shooter in both the SHL and international junior tournaments. As for Pulkkinen, he has a 8.58 shots per 60 minutes through 70 games, and shot over 4 times per game in his last AHL campaign.
This is an exciting development for Minnesota, who has long struggled to find and develop shoot-first players. And it’s similarly exciting for Wild fans who tired of seeing a fourth-line of ineffective defensive players like Jarret Stoll, Ryan Carter, and Chris Porter last year.
Since this line is so radically different than the fourth-line the Wild dragged out last season, it’ll have to be used differently.
Minnesota depended on their depth players to take the brunt of the defensive minutes, almost never starting in the offensive zone. Since Zucker and Pulkkinen have less-than-sterling defensive reputations, that wouldn’t be wise for that unit. To succeed, Boudreau will have to shelter them, setting them up in as many offensive situations as possible.
On other teams, not using their fourth-line for checking would be a problem. But Minnesota is pretty well-suited to use a depth scoring line. Mikko Koivu has been so great at suppressing shots that he is primed to assume a heavy defensive role, freeing up everyone else (including a Pulkkinen line) to be used more offensively.
Fletcher took a big risk depending so heavily on his youth filling out the bottom of his roster, but it worked out pleasantly well. Claiming Pulkkinen gives Minnesota a needed depth forward who’s young, a good fit on the roster, and has a bit of upside. Finding a solution to this problem was important, and being able to do so cheaply and without sacrificing assets was incredibly savvy of Fletcher.
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