Hockey players aren’t the most forthright individuals when it comes to what they’re really thinking. The safety of clichés and formulaic answers is usually too comfortable to pass up. So when Minnesota Wild defenseman Ryan Suter shared some of his pointed thoughts on head coach Mike Yeo’s line juggling in practice, it made some waves.
“I don't know what they're thinking," Suter said Monday after he spent the practice paired with left-shot Jonas Brodin (via the Minneapolis Star-Tribune). "It's different, I need to play with a right-handed defensemen to give me more options in the neutral zone, offensively and even coming out of the D zone. It's not fair to put a guy on his offside. I don't know if it's just for practice today or what it is, they didn't say anything."
Yeo had apparently given his team the what for in practice, so perhaps tensions and tempers were perhaps a little higher than usual.
Maybe cooler heads have prevailed, but Suter was singing a different tune Tuesday ahead of the team’s big game against the Chicago Blackhawks. Or at least he was backtracking on his comments a little bit.
Suter’s comments didn’t bother Yeo, though. In fact, it may have actually been part of the desired result from his in-practice shuffling.
The Wild have lost three straight games and six of their last seven. Frustration was bound to creep in at some point during this stretch. Sometimes that frustration spills out and “leaves the room.”
However, Suter’s comments from Monday gives us some very rare insight into the inner workings of a player’s mind and that’s a good thing. That he prefers to play with a right-shooting defenseman is actually some valuable information. He spent a ton of his minutes last year playing with Brodin and now it sounds like that wasn't something he was totally comfortable with.
Usually a player is going to say, “It doesn’t matter who I play with, I’ll just play my game” and we've learned absolutely nothing. But Suter reveals that it really does matter who they play with, something that is always assumed but rarely confirmed by the players.
And the defenseman may be on to something. As TSN’s Travis Yost points out, Suter’s numbers while playing alongside right-shot Jared Spurgeon, like he has almost all of this season, are indeed better.
On top of that, Suter has been having a pretty strong season, perhaps his best since arriving in Minnesota. He has 20 points in 22 games and is averaging just over 28 minutes a night. He has not been a possession darling during his time with the Wild, but owns a relative Corsi for percentage of 5.0 percent this season (via hockey-reference.com). He’s getting more out of the mega minutes he plays than he ever has before in Minnesota and the Wild are possessing the puck better with him on the ice as a result.
It is so rare to hear a player question the coach publicly, but sometimes that player might have a good point to make. Don't expect this to become the norm, of course. Suter expressing his regret for speaking up is proof enough that these guys don't love putting that kind of stuff out there.