Group therapy: Fans paint ice, send Wild into offseason with encouraging words
ST. PAUL, Minn. -- I ❤ Wild.
Parise scores!
Nobody likes Chicago.
The messages multiplied as the night wore on Tuesday at the Xcel Energy Center. For the second year in a row, Wild season-ticket holders were handed paint, brushes and a liability waiver and asked to decorate Minnesota's home ice before it's taken out for the summer.
Six days after Chicago swept the Wild out of the second round, almost 1,000 folks showed up.
But in a way, none of them wanted this experience with their families. Not yet. Not on May 13.
"Definitely bummed to be here this early," Eagan native Amanda Schiro said, her husband Dean nodding in agreement as their two children did their best impression of Devan Dubnyk scuffing up the crease before each period.
Dean wore a red Wild home jersey that matched that of his 5-year-old son, Erek. Mom and 3-year-old daughter, Megan, went with home green alternates.
"The games were close," Dean said. "It was just -- Chicago."
His sentiments were echoed by fans all over the X last week and on social media in the days since. While Minnesota, led by Dubnyk, surged its way back into playoff contention and took care of St. Louis in six games in the first round, the Blackhawks' third consecutive series win against the Wild has the organization's biggest supporters wondering how head coach Mike Yeo and company can get past what's become a perennial postseason nemesis.
The people who make Minnesota "the home of the home-ice advantage" have been doing their part, Yeo said recently.
"It's amazing how loud our crowd is and the energy that's in the building and the excitement that brings to our players," Yeo said during the playoffs.
The decibel levels tend to reach a fever pitch during playoff pregame introductions. They can get even louder after a goal or when the crowd's on the same page chanting the opposing goalie's name.
"Mayhem," Dubnyk called it during the postseason.
And the attendance numbers back up Minnesota's claim as "the State of Hockey." The Wild set team records with 779,974 fans coming through the door during the regular season, an average of 19,024 -- marks that had stood since 2005-06.
Including five postseason contests, Minnesota has sold out 77 straight games dating back to last year's playoffs. More than 19,000 fans continually stream through the gates in downtown St. Paul even though the arena's official seating capacity for hockey is 17,954.
"I'm still very proud of them," said Angela Pomplun, who along with Sandee McCallum and other family members painted an early-2000s alternate Wild logo in front of the home bench.
"It was still a good season. It was a great season," Pomplun added. "Like I wrote at the bottom of (the logo), 'the best is yet to come.'"
With most of his club's salary-cap space already allotted, general manager Chuck Fletcher doesn't have many options to tweak the roster, save for locking down Dubnyk, a pending unrestricted free agent, for the long term. But as usual, there's already a waiting list for future season tickets -- spurred in part by the NHL's Stadium Series coming to town -- and if Wednesday's turnout was any indication, there's still high hopes for the franchise moving forward.
That's a fact not lost on the players.
"It's a good building," forward Zach Parise said during the playoffs. "When they (get loud), they really make it a tough building for the opposition to play in."
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