Mike Lundin and the Wild

I apologize. I’m the goalie freak around here, as well as being sort of new to Lightning fandom, and I don’t have just a whole lot of insight on Lundin. I have no idea of his stats, but that sort of thing is likely available around the web. He’s dependable, solid, and so on. Boucher liked him. But as weekends can get a bit slow around here, I didn’t want you to think we were ignoring you. :)
I can point you to some previous posts that have some info. The first one would be “Who will the Lightning Miss the Most?” as that has John’s analysis of Lundin’s contributions. You can also look at the comments on Depth on Defense suddenly disappeared."
If you’ve already seen these, I’m sorry that I don’t have anything substantive to add. Hopefully someone who knows more will come and give you something helpful.

As I’ve posted elsewhere, he was not particularly offensively-minded, but managed to put up some points. My favorite line about his play: “he’s never flashy, but always steady.” Coach put him out against all the top lines (Ovechkin, Staal, Crosby) and did well.

You’ll enjoy him in MN for sure.

Shut-down defenseman. When he was coach of the Bolts, John Tortorella loved what Mike was bringing to the table, but he wasn’t ready yet. Lundin ended up exiled to the AHL by a bad piece of roster management the next season by Brian Lawton (2008-09) and proved he deserved to be with the big club after a few call ups in 2009-10. He wasn’t playing 3rd pair, he was playing with (reviled by the Wild) Mattias Ohlund as a member of the top-pair D.

Great mobility, lack of physicality but he’s not going to shy away either. Not an offensive guy, but he has his moments. As others have already said – steady. Worth more than he got on the open market in free agency.

He has the tools to prove to be a steal.

1. From what I’ve gathered from this blog and from other sources, Lundin seems to be a mobile defensive dman who can really eat some minutes. Is that a correct assessment?

Mobile defense man, not really. Positional defense man yes. It’s rare to see him needing to play belly defense (see Kubina). It’s also rare to see him stand someone up with authority (see Ohlund). It is quite common though to see great stick defense from him. After the previous administration’s Boyle fiasco there was a short lived attempt to have Lundin be our puck moving defense man, which was an experiment that never really panned out. All of that said, before we picked up Brewer last year, I thought Lundin was the best pure defense man on the team. No flash. No hit. But ALWAYS there. In other words, no mistakes; which in my mind is the #1 trait you want from a defense man at any level of hockey.

2. Does Lundin have any offensive talent? Some of his numbers are underwhelming, but could he be used in a powerplay/offensive situation?

As I stated earlier, Lundin had previously been given a limited opportunity to be the puck moving defense man, which ended with little success. It’s not that he was terrible at it, but the transition game on the PP never really flowed and our weakness at the time was getting into the zone with any sort of continuity…but that was during a stretch where continuity was a foreign word through the entire Lightning organization.

 What are some weaknesses that Lundin possesses? Any glaring problems in his game?

I would say he is a solid player that can play the top two defensive lines on any team in the NHL. No flash, but all class. Great sign for the Wild, I have no doubt we will miss him.