Too Wild For Comfort

  Iowa played their first two games of the season under new head coach Brett McLean this past weekend, but all the pre-season hype would be spoiled in suffering a sweep by the Henderson Silver Knights. There was a lot to observe, and I wanted to write a full recap, but when I started writing, it looked rather boring. Instead, let’s talk about a couple of things I noticed while in attendance for these two games. 1: Special Teams Issues Iowa went a combined 0-for-6 on the power play this weekend, and whenever they were on the ice for the power play, it looked disorganized. The Wild were very conservative with shooting, resulting in constant back-and-forth passing. One flaw noticed was that multiple times in both games, they would pass to the slot, even if nobody was there to pick it up. This allowed Henderson to create some easy turnovers. Meanwhile, on the penalty kill, Iowa allowed 3 out of 8 attempts from Henderson. I could compare this to last season’s unit, which ranked 30th in ...

  Well, today’s news was certainly unexpected. For the uninitiated, the Iowa Wild signed Mason Shaw to a one-year contract. Yes, the Mason Shaw who tore his ACL last season, and is rehabbing from his fourth knee surgery. Does it sound insane? Hell yes. However, Shaw has been in this predicament before. He has proven to be very resilient throughout his career, and it has paid off big time. Just last season, Shaw recorded 17 points in 59 games for Minnesota and became a mainstay on their depth lines. Of course, I have to mention him being 7th all-time in points with 114 and his leadership qualities. But the details of this story are small, and it is still unsure when or even if Shaw will play a game for Iowa, so let’s just end this post here with some LL Cool J.