Red hot Mitchell confident in latest return to NHL
by Dan Myers @1DanMyers / Wild.com
Wild coach Bruce Boudreau has preached accountability in his one-plus seasons behind the bench with Minnesota, and one of those staples is rewarding guys playing well in Iowa.
With the minor-league club in Des Moines playing well, the Minnesota team wanted to reward its most consistent player, forward Zack Mitchell, who has five goals and 11 assists in 11 games with Iowa this season.
Mitchell has points in seven of his past eight games, with five of those games being multi-point efforts. During that stretch he has five goals and 10 assists and is a plus-4.
Since his last game with Minnesota on Oct. 28, Mitchell has five goals and nine assists in seven games with Iowa.
“I’m playing with some really good players down there,” Mitchell said. “[Pat] Cannone and [Christoph] Bertschy, they’re really good players and they deserve a lot of the credit for that. And it’s nice to come up here with a little bit of confidence and having some of that offensive success.”
Boudreau said he could notice that swagger on the ice during practice at Xcel Energy Center on Tuesday.
“Mitchell has been at the top of the heap down there almost every game this year,” Boudreau said. “Just today, in the little things we were doing in practice, you can see the confidence of making little sauce passes and going top shelf. He was doing that and feeling good about it. I think it’ll be interesting to see him play tomorrow.”
