Near the halfway point of the regular season, the Minnesota Wild are one of the best teams in the league – in large part to a double-digit winning streak in December.
Minnesota’s core of young players – Jason Zucker, Mikael Granlund and Nino Niederreiter – are all having solid years. But it’s Charlie Coyle who’s on pace for the biggest of them all.
Through 35 games, Coyle has 30 points, 12 goals and 18 assists. The 24-year-old, if he keeps up this pace, would finish the year with 28 goals and 42 assists. That’s a 70-point season for the young forward.
Coyle is also playing well on the power play. He’s already set a new career-high in power-play goals with 4.
It also helps that Coyle has played on the top line with center Eric Staal all season. Staal is on pace to finish with the same amount of points.
In previous stops in Anaheim and Washington, Wild head coach Bruce Boudreau always had All-Star caliber players on his top lines, including Alexander Ovechkin, Corey Perry and Ryan Getzlaf.
With all due respect to Staal and Coyle, nobody thought the Wild would have a top line that would be producing at such a high rate.
