Wild Add Center Chouinard
by Chris Thompson

Wednesday July 30, 2003

One day last April, Wild players arrived for practice and found a sign at the entrance saying "FACEOFF" in big letters. The players became excited, thinking they were being rewarded for their successful season with a Travolta/Cage movie instead of practice for the day. Lord knows none of them knew that faceoff had a meaning in hockey too!

Sense the sarcasm yet? While Minnesota has been a very successful team through its first three years in the NHL, one area of the team has been a glaring weakness season after season...the ability to win faceoffs. Minnesota native Darby Hendrickson is considered the best at the draw on the Wild's roster. However, Wes Walz was actually the team leader among regular centers with a 50.43% record. Darby finished at a disappointing 48.42%.

Of players who took at least 25 faceoffs for the Wild last season, Rickard Wallin finished #1 onthe team with a faceoff percentage of 53.57. But that was only 28 faceoffs...hardly a major contributor.

Minnesota finished 27th out of 30 teams in the NHL with a 46.83% faceoff winning percentage. Anaheim, on the other hand, finished #1 with a 55.21 percentage, nearly 1.3% better than Calgary, who finished second.

So what do you do when you're bad at something? Go and get a player who is GOOD at it and add him to your team! That's what the Wild did this week when they signed center Marc Chouinard to a contract. Chouinard is a tall (6'5") center who is good at winning faceoffs. A couple seasons ago he finished second in the NHL winning over 60% of his faceoffs and last season he finished above 55%. Hopefully Chouinard can bring some of that team success to Minnesota.

As far as scoring goes, don't count on Chouinard to be a major contributor for the Wild. He was a solid scoring threat in college, but hasn't found the net much in his time in the NHL. Even so, Risebrough thinks he can improve his scoring. And if he can move the Wild up significantly on the faceoffs list, he'll have earned his money fully.

MANNY SIGNS

The Wild agreed to a one year contract with goaltender Manny Fernandez Wednesday. Fernandez was set to go to arbitration as a restricted free agent. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Manny's impressive 02-03 season certainly earned him a healthy raise.