The Wild Seem Awfully Pleased With Themselves

Kent Youngblood at the Star Tribune had a nice chat with Wild head coach Todd Richards, who's pretty happy about the team's current three-game winning streak:

Richards talked at some length about the benefits of having four days off between games. And not necessarily just because it gives some beat-up or tired players some time to heal and rest. ..."Sometimes in the NHL, you play so much that when you get a streak going you don't really have a chance to enjoy it," Richards said.

Now, I get that the Wild are happy to be in the mix, after they started 0-47 (or whatever) to begin last season and were never in the playoff picture. And I get that Richards is especially happy, given that there was some fairly serious talk that he might be fired by the time the team got back from its season-opening trip to Finland.

But let's have some perspective here, eh? The Wild are 7-6 and have 16 points. They are in eighth place in the West and just as close to 14th-place Calgary as they are to first-place St. Louis. They have played nine home games and four road games, no small matter for a team that last year was a horrid 13-28 on the road.

All I'm saying is this: Maybe let's not start printing playoff tickets after 13 games, eh, fellas?