Minnesota Wild enter 10th home opener much like their first: struggling to jell
Folks from the Wild are making a production out of their club's first home game of Year X of NHL play tonight at the Xcel Energy Center, offering numerous salutes as well as a red-carpet entrance for players.
But just as it was during the home opener on Oct. 11, 2000, the focal point tonight will be on a hockey team striving for credibility in the NHL's Western Conference.
Darby Hendrickson will be there tonight, as he was then.
Hendrickson remembered the first regular-season game at the X, a 3-3 tie with the Philadelphia Flyers in which he scored Minnesota's first home goal, as "a special, unique time here."
There were many highlights that year, from the first home exhibition game to the Wild's first victory over Tampa Bay to the first visit by the Dallas Stars, who had been trucked out of Minnesota by owner Norm Green seven years earlier.
From the beginning, the Wild opened their games with the "Let's play hockey" cheer, and not long after that on the first night, less-than-flattering chants were heard about Green from both the expensive and cheap seats.
Hendrickson, now an assistant coach for the Wild, fondly remembers how a ragtag group of NHL castoffs and hopefuls took the ice for Minnesota's expansion franchise that season and demonstrated to the inevitably sold-out house that this would be a team that battles.
By design.
"This," then-coach Jacques Lemaire said after the opener, "is the type of game our fans will get used to seeing."
And they did.
Hendrickson recalled that many of the players didn't know one another very well, "but I think there was a feeling that grew throughout the year that we were competing."
A Richfield native, Hendrickson said he was "just a part of the gang," but a closeness emerged under Lemaire. It is the kind of closeness the Wild are attempting to replicate this season as they try to reach the playoffs for the first time in three years.
That first team "bought into what was happening," Hendrickson recalled, and said the plan this season "is the same concept. You're trying to get your team to where you sacrifice, where you play for the guy next to you. ...
"It's a big challenge. How do you get everybody on the same page?
"It's certainly a different group now, and it's a different time. There are a lot of expectations."
A former winner of Minnesota's Mr. Hockey Award, Hendrickson, 38, finished his NHL career playing for the Colorado Avalanche in 2003-04, then spent two seasons in Europe before retiring with 65 goals and 64 assists in 518 NHL games.
He remembers players looking one another in the eye during the Wild's Year I and finding ways to push one another. They won more fans than games, finishing 25-44-13.
This team might have to win a few fans, too.
The Wild failed to sell out three home exhibition games, ending a streak of 409 consecutive sellouts at the Xcel Energy Center. There were still a few tickets remaining for tonight's game on Wednesday.
Success will bring in customers, Wild personnel say, and Hendrickson says it's about getting the team to jell much the way they tried to do 10 years ago.
"Our team is completely different," he said, "but the concept is the same about how you're trying to create success and create that atmosphere and that feeling.
"There was a lot of character on that team."
Hendrickson believes this year's team has similar character. But, he said, "it's up to everybody. It's up to the staff, it's up to the players. It's that feeling you're trying to spread, when you look at the guy next to you, he knows what he's getting out of you that night."
