Minnesota is off to a hot start, with 21 points in their first 17 games. Their numbers don't look substantially different than they did over the last three years aside from their 5-on-5 save percentage: (those are league-wide ranks, btw - Minnesota was 30th in the league in shots for in each of the last three seasons!)

Rank 5v5 5v5 5v5 5v5 SF/60 SA/60 Sdiff/60 SV% Pts/82 2011-12 27 21 25 1 (946) 101 2010-11 30 27 30 14 (921) 86 2009-10 30 16 25 22 (911) 84 2008-09 30 19 26 4 (925) 89 3yr Avg 30 21 27 13 (919) 86

The highest non-Tim Thomas-driven 5v5 save percentage over the last four seasons is 933, so you can be absolutely sure this is unsustainable. In fact, it's not clear that the Wild are any better than they've been for the last three seasons. So how will Minnesota do going forward?