Ben Remington covers the Wild for ColdOmaha.com (I love that name). You can follow him on Twitter @BenRemington. Bryan Reynolds, on the other hand, is just some lunatic who won’t leave us alone so we toss him this bone every so often to make him go away. But it never works. Anyway, he’s on Twitter @BReynoldsMN.

We’ll get to the tough one first. The Wild are on pace for their best regular season ever. They should win the division for only the second time. Is it a mirage or is this for real?

Remington: From what I’ve seen, it’s hard to not say that it’s for real. As usual, some of the fancy stats point to regression, but others bear out that this team has been very, very good so far this season. Even the players that are ‘slumping’ are having decent seasons, and we’ve seen monumental steps up from young players that have been underachieving for most of their time here. Dubnyk is still the key, and him continuing to play well will be the difference between them winning the conference or not, but even with a noticeable regression to the mean recently, his January was just average, not bad, and he could catch fire again. 

Reynolds: I’m a Minnesota sports fan, and I’ve learned that nothing happens faster than a Minnesota sports team imploding. In this case, I’m calling them a mirage right up to the moment Mikko Koivu grabs the Cup from Commissioner Gru’s tiny Trump hands and gives Gary the steely eyed death glare and maybe mutters, “I can’t believe Pantera made a song for the Stars.” I have no idea what that last part even means, but no, I don’t trust this anymore than I trust the Oilers to select a defenseman in the draft.