Wild must rebound in St. Louis after another tough loss to Blues

St. Paul – The Wild have inserted themselves into a gaping hole.

“It’s up to us,” winger Chris Stewart said, “to dig ourselves out of it.”

Can they?

Wild coach Bruce Boudreau, whose Anaheim Ducks team lost two games at home to start a series against the Los Angeles Kings a year ago, noted that the Ducks rebounded in that series.

“You win one game and it’s amazing what that can do,”  Boudreau said. “We just have to go in and look at Sunday and say, ‘OK. Let’s just win one game.’ And take it from there.”

This dilemma arrived because the St. Louis Blues scored with just 2:27 remaining in regulation and grabbed their second consecutive 2-1 victory over the Wild Friday night in front of a season-high crowd of 19,404 at the Xcel Energy Center.

St. Louis leads the best-of-seven series 2-0 heading into games Sunday afternoon and Wednesday night in St. Louis.

“It’s obviously not the way you want to start,” defenseman Ryan Suter said. “We’ve got to regroup.”

Defenseman Joel Edmundson scored his second goal of the playoffs to give the Blues a 1-0 lead in the second period, but Zach Parise’s five-on-three power-play goal 14 minutes later tied the score.

As in their Game 1 overtime loss, however, Parise’s goal was all Minnesota could manage.

That’s because the Blues, who were outshot only 24-22, came on stronger in Game 2.

“I thought they played a good game,” Parise said. “It felt like they were a little quicker, they were a little better in the D-zone than the first game. I thought they played better and we didn’t play as well.”

For the second time, Jake Allen yielded just one goal for the Blues.

“We needed Jake to be great again tonight,” Blues coach Mike Yeo said.

But Allen got a ton of help.

“They clog the middle of the ice up,” Boudreau said. “They’ve got six big defensemen, and it’s hard to get through.”

“They’re defending hard,” Wild winger Jason Pominville explained. “Their goalie has been seeing the puck well, and one thing they do well is they have five guys around the paint so it makes it tough for us to get on the inside.”

Overtime seemed to be looming until roughing penalties against Minnesota’s Charlie Coyle and the Blues’ Scottie Upshall with 4:03 left in the third period set up a four-on-four situation that left Wild goaltender Devan Dubnyk shaking his head after the game.

And not just because Jaden Schwartz took advantage, scoring at 17:33 through a screen that blocked the shot from Dubnyk’s vision.

But Dubnyk especially didn’t like the four-on-four scenario at a critical point in a tie game.

“That’s unacceptable in a 1-1 hockey game, to make that call,” Dubnyk said. “It just doesn’t make sense. You can watch it a hundred times, there’s zero reason.”

Allen made a big four-on-four save at one end, and a few seconds later, Alex Pietrangelo slid the puck to Schwartz for the deciding goal.

“One heck of a shot,” Pietrangelo said.

And, 14 months to the day after a Wild tailspin cost Yeo his coaching job, Yeo recorded his second playoff victory as a visiting coach at the X. 

Yeo, as he takes his team back to St. Louis for two games on home ice, has a singular perspective about his situation and his opponent.

“We’re real happy we got both wins in here,” he said, “but I know that’s not a team that’s gonna quit. They’re not gonna go away.”

Exactly, according to Stewart.

“There’s no quit in this dressing room,” he said. “There’s a lot of heart in this dressing room. Right now we’re going to go on the road and we’ll be ready for Game 3.”

Said Dubnyk: “We just need to get the next one. That’s got to be our focus right now. We’ve been a good road team all year, so we’re just going to try to keep playing our game and I think we’ll get some momentum here.”

The post Down But Not Out appeared first on Minnesota Hockey Magazine.

Minnesota not willing to concede after one-goal loss to Stars

St. Paul – If it was the final home game for the Wild Wednesday night, they went out on a pretty good note.

John Torchetti does not think it will be the last one.

The Dallas Stars scored two power-play goals and got a deflection off the skate of Jason Spezza late in the second period, then held on to defeat the Wild 3-2, sending 19,080 loud and expectant Minnesota fans home disappointed.

The win gave Dallas a 3-1 lead in the best-of-seven series; the Stars can close it out Friday night in Dallas. Minnesota needs a victory in Dallas to extend the series to a Game 6 Sunday in St. Paul.

“I’m not worried about us going there,” interim Wild coach Torchetti said. “I’m looking forward to it. I’m looking forward to see who’s going to step up. When you’re a coach, you want to see that character.”

Torchetti, who took over from Mike Yeo in mid-February and likely needs his team to win a series or two to increase his chances to become the full-time coach next season, came up from the Iowa Wild with plenty of intensity and plenty of observations about his favorite game.

“Everyone always has character when you win,” he said. “Your real character is when you’re losing. That’s the bottom line.”

Torchetti has witnessed character: This team experienced winning and losing streaks at season’s end including losing the final five games of the regular season. It was blown out of Game 1 in the playoffs before rebounding with a better effort in a Game 2 loss. It responded by taking play to the Stars in a 5-3 home win Monday.

Game 4 started on a similar note with the Wild seizing a 1-0 lead on a Jason Pominville second-period deflection and a 2-1 lead on Charley Coyle’s dazzling second-period breakaway.

“I liked our game,” Torchetti said. “We’ve just got to go and win a game in their building.”

The Wild outshot the Stars 30-22, but Dallas erased two one-goal deficits with goals on its power play.

“The story of the game was special teams,” Pominville said. “They won that battle. We played pretty well five on five. It would have been nice to have a better turnout for sure.”

Pominville says the team needs to accept its circumstances and respond.

“We put ourselves in a pretty tough spot,” he said. “We have dug ourselves out of tough situations all year, so we’ve got to do it again.”

Under Torchetti, players such as Pominville, Erik Haula and Nino Niederreiter have stepped up their games. Pominville’s goal gave him eight goals and 11 assists in his first 24 games playing for Torchetti  (he missed seven games due to injury in March) after he tallied just two goals and one assist in his final 25 games under Yeo.

Niederreiter and Haula assisted on Pominville’s goal, but the Minnesota PK proved to be a killer of the wrong kind.

“We took a couple penalties,” defenseman Ryan Suter said, “and it ended up costing us there.”

It was 2-1 and the big crowd was roaring, but Patrick Eaves scored with a man advantage from in front at 13:24 to tie it up at 2-2, and Spezza’s goal 5½ minutes later decided it.

It placed the Wild back on the edge of being finished.

“We’re best when our backs are against the wall,” Suter said. “They’re definitely against the wall now.”

If Dallas closes out the series Friday, questions will loom about the future of the Minnesota franchise: Will Zach Parise and Thomas Vanek recover decently from injuries that have them currently sidelined; who will be the head coach; what other moves are in store?

Wild players, who struggled through 82 games with just 87 points heading into the playoffs, prepared for a Thursday trip to Texas with none of those thoughts but concentrating instead on just one thing: forcing Game 6.

“We’ve got to focus on one game,” Pominville said. “Go win a game there; who knows what happens after that?”

The post Backs Against the Wall appeared first on Minnesota Hockey Magazine.

St. Paul – Chris Porter says he could attempt that shot 10 times and maybe be fortunate to thread it into the net once.

On Monday night, however, with the Wild trailing the Dallas Stars 2-0 in a best-of-seven Stanley Cup Playoff series and trailing the Stars 2-0 in the final minute of the first period of Game 3, Porter deflected in a shot by Erik Haula to make it 2-1.

“I think it was one of those lucky plays tonight, it went in,” Porter said. “Tomorrow it probably wouldn’t.”

“Porter’s a kid, he’s wailin’ out there,” Wild interim coach John Torchetti said.

Porter’s goal plus a few choice first-intermission words from Torchetti seemed to ignite a fire under a Wild team that had wandered a bit aimlessly through losing territory since March 29. By evening’s end, Minnesota left the ice with a 5-3 victory over the Stars and the sudden prospect of making this first-round series interesting.

“We did a good job,” Porter said. “We’re going to celebrate in here tonight and move on and get ready for Game 4.”

The Wild, who endured a few boos after Dallas’ winger Patrick Sharp scored twice in the first 4½ minutes, quickly brought the Xcel Energy Center crowd of 19,038 around by holding Dallas without a shot for the first third of the second period.

When Haula deflected in a shot by Pominville at the 6:04 mark, the Wild looked like a team that had finally remembered the ingredients required to win in the NHL: intensity, battle level, second effort and defending their own goal.

“I think for us, the biggest thing is defending and playing well in our end,” Pominville said. “When we do that, we have the puck more. You’ve got to defend. Offense isn’t going to win you games; it’s the way you defend and I thought tonight we defended well after the tough start.”

Led by two goals and an assist from Pominville, a goal and an assist by Haula plus goals by Porter and Mikko Koivu, the Wild dictated the tempo and outshot the Stars 25-17 to rule out a four-game Stars’ sweep.

Minnesota led 3-2 about six minutes into the final period when Koivu, who had not scored a goal since March 22 and came in with just seven goals in 41 playoff games, banged a rebound past Stars goalie Kari Lehtonen to make it 4-2.

That turned out to be the winning goal and the first playoff winning goal for Koivu. Uncharacteristically, he leaped against the glass above the end boards in celebration.

“Mikko’s celebration was great; I haven’t seen him celebrate like that, so I was happy for him,” Porter said.

Torchetti admitted he had been asking Koivu for more coming in. And, Torchetti added, “He showed up big tonight.”

The interim coach, who took over in mid-February, challenged his players to deliver more after the first period, Pominville said, “and we got the response we wanted. We battled hard in the last couple periods.”

Players said this surge in play began during the 2-1 loss in Game 2 on Saturday in Dallas.

Haula’s label for it: Everybody “pulling on the same rope.”

“We got a lot better with the puck,” he said. “We got more speed going in. We put their D on their heels I think for the first time in the series.”

Goaltender Devan Dubnyk, who stopped 14 of 17 shots for the win, watched his team create the kind of offensive firepower that had been lacking as Minnesota scored just one goal in its first two playoff games.

“We came into the series with confidence, knowing that’s how we need to play and that’s how we’re capable of playing – fast and hard, taking the body and turning pucks over,” Dubnyk said. “That’s the game we need to play and tonight we had no choice but to get to that. That should give us a lot of confidence going forward.”

The triumph ended a streak of seven consecutive losses counting the final five of the regular season.

The post Wild Battle Back appeared first on Minnesota Hockey Magazine.

Minnesota blows chance to gain ground on Nashville

St. Paul – After a season-high six consecutive victories capped by a humongous win over the Chicago Blackhawks, perhaps the Wild were due for a letdown.

“I hope not,” winger Jason Pominville said. “We’re not in any position to have any letdowns right now. We can’t afford that.”

Still, the Wild needed nearly half of Thursday’s game against the Ottawa Senators to muster 10 shots on goal. They came from behind to tie the score twice on goals by Zach Parise and Erik Haula, but the Senators escaped the Xcel Energy Center with a 3-2 victory after getting a fluke goal with 3:57 to play.

“That’s unfortunate,” Parise said of the winning goal, which caromed past goaltender Devan Dubnyk after deflecting off Haula’s skate. “But I think you have to look at the game as a whole. Did we play well enough to win the game? I don’t know.”

They did not, according to coach John Torchetti, who said the line of Mikko Koivu, Charlie Coyle and Parise was his team’s lone consistent line of the evening.

“We didn’t come out with the strongest game,” Torchetti said. “You can’t play with really, one line. We had three lines that didn’t do a good job tonight.”

In addition, winger Thomas Vanek left the ice early during warm-ups and was not able to play because of an upper-body injury, and then Jared Spurgeon blocked a shot by Bobby Ryan on his second shift of the game and was unable to come back.

“That sucks,” defenseman Dumba said. “Spurgeon is a big part of our back end, and whenever you’re playing with five D, it’s hard.”

This game seemed to veer all over for the Wild, who defeated the Blackhawks 4-1 two nights earlier to extend their victory streak to six. Minnesota had seven shots on goal in the first period, came on strong after Parise’s goal midway through the second and then played hit and miss later.

“We just didn’t play a solid 60 minutes,” Torchetti said. “We have a lot of guys that have got to up their ante there. There’s no nights off in this league. We’ve got to be ready to battle, and I didn’t like our battle level.”

Said Parise: “I just don’t think we played as well as we needed to.”

The comeback was heartening to a vocal crowd of 19,032, but a quick whistle eliminated a possible goal by Dumba when it was 2-2 in the third period, and several shifts later Cody Ceci sailed past the Minnesota net, slid the puck in front and it ricocheted in off Haula.

“A tough bounce,” Haula said.

“It’s unfortunate,” Pominville said. “We were able to bounce back and tie the game up, and then they get a fluke goal at the end, which is not fun when you battle that hard to get back into the game.”

Minnesota is down to its final four games and leads Colorado by five points, but missed a chance to open that gap to seven and also pull within two points of Nashville for seventh place in the NHL West.

The Wild get a quick opportunity to turn things around with a game against the Red Wings in Detroit Friday night.

“We have to be better tomorrow,” defenseman Jonas Brodin said.

After Thursday’s game, a letdown would be impossible.

The post Sens Snap Wild Streak appeared first on Minnesota Hockey Magazine.

Pominville, Granlund among those due to heat up offensively

What’s strange through nine games is that the Wild are winning despite a surprising number of guys who aren’t contributing much.

Erik Haula and Jared Spurgeon have zero goals apiece, while Jason Zucker, Mikael Granlund, Justin Fontaine and Matt Dumba each have one.

Those guys are expected to score.

Then there’s Jason Pominville, who came into this season with 237 career goals in 752 games. He nailed the crossbar in the first period of Tuesday night’s 4-3 victory over the Edmonton Oilers, drawing oohs from the Xcel Energy Center crowd of 18,936.

But Pominville has no goals and five assists so far.

The good news: It hardly seems to matter.

The win, concluding three games in four nights and four games in six nights, gave the Wild a 6-2-1 record.

“We’re winning different ways,” coach Mike Yeo said. “We’re not perfect, but when you’re winning games, there’s positives for sure. It was a tough stretch here, but this is how we’ll get better.”

Mikael Granlund has just one goal through nine games this season. (MHM Photo / Jonathan Watkins)

Pominville, who scored 30 goals two years ago and 18 last season, seems to get the brunt of the attention from dissatisfied fans. He and Granlund have just one goal between them compared to seven for their linemate, Zach Parise.

But Yeo says he’s not about to panic.

“Just like everybody, they’re not 100 percent on top of their game,” Yeo said, “but I really felt like tonight was a step in the right direction.”

On this evening, Ryan Suter netted his first two goals of the season while Marco Scandella picked up his first. Then Charlie Coyle, demoted briefly from the third line to the fourth line because Yeo wasn’t liking what he was seeing, scored the game-winner off a pass from Thomas Vanek midway through the third period.

“I just tried to respond in the third there and get back to my game, make something happen,” Coyle said. “It was a good result. It’s nice to be rewarded when you do it, but I’ve got to do it consistently and not get away from it.”

Yeo was asked if he was sending Coyle a message.

Message or otherwise, Yeo noted, “he responded.”

Even without many goals from several players, the Wild raised their goal total to 28 in nine games, which ranks in the top 10 of the NHL. Vanek is second to Parise on the team with four goals and also has four assists, while Nino Niederreiter, Mikko Koivu and Coyle each have three goals.

Koivu, who has points in eight of Minnesota’s nine games, extended his points-streak to seven games and has eight points. Suter also raised his points total to eight.

Twelve players have three points or more in Minnesota’s balanced attack.

“It’s a great thing,” Scandella said. “Everyone’s playing well, and we’re finding a way to win. That’s the most important thing.”

Vanek says that when a teammate slumps, it’s up to other guys to chip in.

“That’s what makes a good team,” he said. “Things are going good for me right now; I know I hit that rough patch. We need guys like Pomer to step up, which he will.

“Again, no one has perfect seasons. There’s going to be a stretch when it doesn’t go your way, and we need other guys to pick each other up. That’s what makes a good team, and right now we’re doing that.”

Even goalie Devan Dubnyk has produced lackluster statistics so far. He stopped 22 of 25 shots against the Oilers Tuesday night and has a goals-against average is 2.27 and a save percentage of .909.

More important, however, is that he has a 6-2 record.

And through Tuesday’s play, Minnesota was tied for second in the Western Conference with 13 points, just one behind Dallas.

The post Wild winning despite missing links appeared first on Minnesota Hockey Magazine.

Struggles against Chicago only get tougher to swallow

It’s been nearly a year since the Chicago Blackhawks were gifted a 2-1 Game 6 overtime win over the Minnesota Wild in the second round of the 2014 Stanley Cup Playoffs.

The puck ricocheted off of an Xcel Energy Center glass stanchion to Patrick Kane — of all people — who, in a split second facilitated Minnesota’s second straight postseason elimination by the Blackhawks.

Fast forward to Tuesday night’s Game 3 in which Kane scored the lone goal, his fourth of the series, in a 1-0 Chicago win in St. Paul to give the Blackhawks a commanding 3-0 second-round series lead.

The Wild may very well win Game 4 at home on Thursday and avoid a sweep, but to expect even this resilient group to become just the fifth team NHL history to rally from such a deficit is asking a lot. Wild defenseman Ryan Suter, however, offered a slightly different, albeit unrealistic, take.

“We’ve always seemed to make it harder on us than we need to,” Suter said. “Maybe this is a good thing for us.”

Chicago’s Patrick Kane continues to be a thorn in Minnesota’s side, especially in the postseason. (MHM Photo / Jeff Wegge)

Each of the aforementioned Kane goals was his sixth of the postseason and both, one unequivocally and one potentially, killed the Wild’s postseason.

But they also produced vastly different post-game reactions from players.

Kane’s overtime winner a year ago left Minnesota with a sense of disappointment and frustration in its failure to advance, but it was tempered by pride in advancing past the first round for the first time in 11 seasons and pushing the defending Stanley Cup champs as hard as they did.

“I thought we had our chances and that’s why it really sucks right now,” Wild captain Mikko Koivu said at the time. “It’s been a great run. It’s been the best time of my NHL career and when it ends like that it’s an empty feeling right now.”

Zach Parise added, “We did a lot of good things to get to where we are but it’s disappointing to be ending right now.”

Win, lose or “happy point,” Parise is generally not one to shy away from questions after a game, but it was clear Tuesday’s loss particularly stung Minnesota’s assistant captain. He responded to eight questions with a total of 101 words.

When asked where his team goes from here, Parise replied, “Win the fourth game. That’s about it.”

While others in the room may have offered more in terms of sound bites, the cloud hovering above them was a few shades darker than it was 51 weeks ago.

The faces, such as Parise, Koivu, Jason Pominville, Suter and Mike Yeo, remain the same but their expectations have since risen to a point where the Wild’s current conundrum is virtually inconceivable to them.

“We know what we’re up against, so I’m not going to get up here right now and give a big rah-rah speech,” Yeo said after Game 3. “We’ve got to win a game. It’s as simple as that. In all honesty, I’ve never been here before. It’s kind of unfamiliar territory. I guess what you do is try to draw upon previous experiences even though it’s not the same.”

Yes, it’s true this same cast of characters compiled a pitiful 18-19-5 record through 42 regular season games and stormed back to make the playoffs. But while its 28-9-3 mark to close out the season may reflect overachievement to a degree, it is by far a more accurate depiction of the Wild’s capabilities.

So, of course, Minnesota looked at this series as a chance to advance to the Western Conference Finals for the first time since 2003 — especially after the Wild dispatched St. Louis, considered by many a tougher matchup for them, in six games.

Scenes like this have been few and far between for the Wild in their series with Chicago. (MHM Photo / Jonathan Watkins)

But the playoff demons which have plagued the Wild against Chicago the past two seasons linger: Kane, Corey Crawford, Jonathan Toews, Patrick Sharp, Marian Hossa and, let’s be honest, some pretty miserable puck luck.

“We had some good looks, weren’t able to find a way to put one in and they miss a play, get a bounce and end up scoring a goal,” Pominville said. “That’s the difference. We just got to find a way to put one in and lately we haven’t been getting those bounces go our way.”

Even the one Minnesota exorcised, its own goaltending stability, hasn’t made a difference as season-savior Devan Dubnyk hasn’t been up to par against the Blackhawks. When asked what happened on the Kane goal in Game 3, Dubnyk took the Parise approach.

“Well, he shot it through my legs. That is what happened.”

But none of the rest of it matters if the Wild can’t score.

Minnesota’s top-5 regular season goal scorers (Parise, Nino Niederreiter, Thomas Vanek, Jason Zucker and Pominville) have combined for just 11 playoff goals in nine games and only two against Chicago. That’s two fewer than Kane alone has scored against Minnesota.

“We have to make sure we play our heart out next game and make sure we get some goals,” Niederreiter said. “That’s the biggest thing, we can’t win if we don’t score and that’s exactly what happened tonight.”

The oft-criticized Vanek has zero goals to go with his four postseason assists which hardly make up for his defensive liabilities.

On the other hand, Chicago’s five best goal scorers in the regular season have scored seven of their 17 overall postseason goals in this series and while Hossa, too, is scoreless he’s also a tremendous asset in his own zone.

Looking back at how the series has unfolded, it would be easy to recall specific key moments in each game and ponder the “What if …?” scenarios and the impact they had on the overall outcome. But Koivu dismissed that notion without hesitation.

“We haven’t done that and we’re not starting to do that,” Koivu said. “We’re going to take every positive thing that we have and what we had throughout the season. Right now we’re going to get ready for Game 4 and not look any further than that like we’ve been doing all season long.”

The post 3-0 deficit a bitter pill for Wild appeared first on Minnesota Hockey Magazine.

Coach’s patient approach guides Minnesota into conference semifinals

St. Paul — On the day he was introduced as the third coach in Minnesota Wild history, Mike Yeo used the words aggressive, physical, detailed, structured and smart to describe the terms he wanted used when people spoke about the Wild from that point forward.

That was June 17, 2011 and now, a little more than 46 months later, each of those attributes was in play as Minnesota eliminated the St. Louis Blues in six games in their best-of-7 Stanley Cup Playoff first round series.

With a 4-1 win over the Blues on Sunday at Xcel Energy Center, the Wild closed out a playoff series — a victorious one — at home for the first time in franchise history.

The win comes two games after a 6-1 loss at home in Game 4 which sent Minnesota headed back to St. Louis for Game 5 having lost the home ice edge it had seized by splitting the first two games on the road.

But Yeo managed to maintain his team’s focus and confidence level enough to right the ship and avoid a trip back to Scottrade Center for Game 7.

The Wild rebounded from the blowout loss to outscore the Blues 8-2 over the series’ final two games and advance to face Chicago in the Western Conference semifinals.

“I think his ability to keep an even keel, his ability to understand what the team needs at certain points and provide that is invaluable,” Wild forward Matt Cooke said of Yeo. “I think he’s done a remarkable job dealing with this group and handling us through trials and through successes.”

In an ironic twist, one of the candidates Yeo beat out for the Minnesota job four years ago is St. Louis coach Ken Hitchcock who is likely to be back on the open market soon after another disappointing early playoff exit for the Blues.

Yeo has seen the Wild through tough times in his tenure and, depending on who you want to believe, may have come perilously close to being replaced himself more than once. Admittedly, in early January of 2014 I had Yeo’s Wild coaching obituary already written with only the name of his replacement to be inserted.

But as was the case this season, Minnesota went on a remarkable second-half run to not only make the playoffs, but advance past the first round. While the acquisition of Devan Dubnyk is given most of the credit for this season’s turnaround, it could not have happened if Yeo hadn’t maintained the trust of his players in the dressing room.

Forward Jason Pominville, tied for second on the team in scoring in the series with five points (2-3–5), said that comes from Yeo’s is his ability to listen to his players.

“His approach is great with the players,” he said. “He’s a coach that the players enjoy playing for and I enjoy the way he listens to what the guys have to say. If you have something you can go talk to him and he’ll take note and he’ll listen to what you have to say.”

Assistant captain Zach Parise, who scored two of Minnesota’s four goals in Game 6, praised Yeo for his patience with the team.

“I think he’s done a good job of just keeping us level-headed, whether we’re playing really well or whether we can’t win a game,” Parise said. “The systems haven’t changed, the ideas, the approach hasn’t changed. He gives you the blueprint and we know it works when we do it well.”

Yeo said he considers himself “a lucky guy” to be surrounded by the coaching staff he has and said everything starts with the team’s leadership in the dressing room.

“Our leadership group is outstanding but we’ve got a bunch of guys that I consider winners,” Yeo said. “They’re willing to do the little things, things that go unnoticed, but they’re willing to do those things to win hockey games.

“There’s a lot of pride in that room.”

The post Yeo’s even keel stabilizes Wild appeared first on Minnesota Hockey Magazine.

Dominant Game 3 performance lifts Minnesota over St. Louis

St. Paul – The Wild played textbook defense to disassemble the St. Louis Blues’ attack, ignored the Blues’ repeated attempts to square off and rolled to a 3-0 victory Monday night to take a 2-1 lead in the best-of-7 NHL playoff series.

With a highly amped crowd of 19,165 prepared to lift the ceiling of the Xcel Energy Center, fourth-seeded Minnesota played like the favorite for 60 minutes against the top-seeded Blues.

And, as people like to say, the crowd went wild.

“We fed off the energy the crowd gave us,” said forward Jason Pominville, whose second-period goal was the winner. “We knew it was going to be good and it was even better than what I expected.”

Devan Dubnyk needed just 17 saves to record the shutout while Pominville, Zach Parise and Nino Niederreiter each scored for the Wild, who will try to secure a 3-1 series lead in Game 4 Wednesday night at the X.

“Obviously, we feel good about our game,” Pominville said, “but we’ve got to put it behind us and look at the next one because they’re going to regroup and bounce back just like they did at home.”

The Wild’s speed game left St. Louis behind much of the evening and reduced players like Steve Ott and David Backes to trying to goad Minnesota players into extracurricular post-whistle stuff.

Didn’t happen.

“Our guys are able to handle it,” Wild coach Mike Yeo said.

The line of Mikael Granlund, Pominville and Parise each accounted for two second-period points as the Wild took control before getting a late empty-netter from Niederreiter.

“We were a lot better with the puck tonight in the offensive zone,” Parise said. “We were holding onto it longer, making some more plays and we were better on the rush, I thought, attacking the middle of the ice. We were able to get into the zone with some pressure. Teams look fast when you do that.”

Neither team got a lot going during a scoreless first period, but the Wild limited the Blues to just four shots on goal as a sign that it was not about to yield a whole lot.

Minnesota grabbed a 1-0 lead when Parise found Pominville alone in front of a wide-open net at 14:08 of the second period, and two minutes later Parise dug the puck free and beat Blues goaltender Jake Allen to make it 2-0.

The vocal response of the 19,000-plus surprised Dubnyk, who was playing his first home playoff game and said he couldn’t even hear officials’ whistles or the simple sounds of the game.

“You’re moving around deaf and, you know, I think we fed off it,” he said. “We got going in the second period and really used the crowd to our advantage.”

Granlund’s line was one of four that repeatedly outskated the Blues.

“Every single line, every pairing tonight was on top of the puck,” Dubnyk said.

Jason Zucker, Justin Fontaine and several others put on speed skating demonstrations all evening for the appreciative standing-room-only audience.

“We’re build on speed,” Yeo pointed out. “We have to be playing fast.”

Additionally, they utilized their speed to backcheck the heck out of the Blues forwards who had led St. Louis to a 4-1 win in Game 2 in St. Louis.

“I thought from goalie on out, we didn’t have a passenger,” Parise said. “Everyone contributed in their own way. We were tough to play against.”

Charlie Coyle, who had three hits as Minnesota led 28-26 in hits, said his team produced exactly what was called for.

“That’s the type of game we want right there,” he said. “A tough game on them, make things tough, clog up the neutral zone and don’t give ’em much.”

Dubnyk had an often relaxed 60 minutes, thanks to Minnesota leading 24-17 in shots and quickly clearing out the defensive zone whenever the Blues got close.

“The defense played awesome,” Coyle said. “We were trying to help out, blocking shots, being in the shooting lane, boxing out guys, and that’s the way we want to play.”

After outplaying the Blues soundly in two of three games and battling them evenly in the other, the Wild appear to be sitting in a very comfortable spot. Nevertheless, they say they are taking nothing for granted.

“It’s all about the next game now,” Granlund said. “It was a good effort for us, but we need to keep on and move to the next game.”

Backes, the Blues’ captain who is from Blaine, pointed out that his team certainly expects to be ready for Game 4.

“We have to learn our lesson, put this behind us and remember it’s a battle out there,” he said. “It’s a war and it’s going to take a great effort every night against this team.”

The post Wild zip to series lead against Blues appeared first on Minnesota Hockey Magazine.

Former Gopher’s goal not enough as Wild inch closer to playoff spot

SAINT PAUL – Florida forward Nick Bjugstad’s return home was a good one for him on the scoresheet.

The Blaine, Minn. native and University of Minnesota alum, wearing a white and red sweater draped in his familiar No. 27, scored his 19^th goal of the season midway through the game. It wasn’t the prettiest. Skating down the ice, the 6’6” second year pro got a shot off from below the face-off circle through Wild goaltender Devan Dubnyk and into the net.

“It’s fun to play in front of your family and friends, and to be able to get a goal like that is pretty cool,” said Bjugstad, who played with 150 of his closest family and friends in the Xcel Energy crowd.

Thursday wasn’t a success for him in the standings, however. Instead, the home team got two much-needed points.

Bjugstad’s goal was the only one Minnesota gave up Thursday. The Wild, coming off an overtime road loss to Winnipeg that broke a six game winning streak, held onto a 2-1 lead against the Panthers in the third period to remain hot with its fifth win in six home games.

“Great to have found a way to win a game like that. The game was everything that we had expected it to be,” said Minnesota head coach Mike Yeo about his team, playing for the third time in four nights.

Minnesota got goals from Jason Pominville and Zach Parise while Dubnyk made 26 saves Thursday. Eight of those came in the third period when the Panthers had a four minute double minor and spent the game’s final 79 seconds on the power play.

Pominville got the Wild on the scoreboard 4:12 into the game with his third goal in as many games and 12^th on the season. Mikko Koivu, who had two assists Thursday, found Pominville open on the back door behind Florida goaltender Roberto Luongo. Although the puck was deflected off Pominville’s skate, the referees ruled it was not a distinct kicking motion.

“His game has been really good coming out of the All-Star break,” Yeo said about Pominville, who nearly had a second goal in the third period when he hit the post. “He’s been creating a lot of scoring chances, getting a lot of zone time in the offensive zone and just been real solid about that.”

Parise made it 2-0 Minnesota in the second period. With Dave Bolland in the penalty box for cross-checking Mathew Dumba in the offensive zone, Parise needed a second effort to tap the Thomas Vanek rebound into the net with 14:08 remaining in the middle frame before Bjugstad’s goal cut the Wild’s lead in half three minutes later.

“That was a good shot. Sometimes you get beat there and even though you’re leaning off or you’re cheating as the shot is taken, you know you’re in trouble,” said Dubnyk. “I don’t usually say that I wish I was a few inches taller, but I wish I was a few inches taller there. It was surprising, but great shot. That’s the kind that you tip your cap to and move on.”

Growth or not, the 6’6” Dubnyk stopped late opportunities from Sean Bergenheim, Bjugstad and Jonathan Huberdeau to keep it at a one-goal game .

Just as important was Minnesota’s penalty kill, which went 5 for 5. The Panthers received a four minute power play 3:54 into the third period when Ryan Suter was called for high sticking. Florida was only able to get two shots from the blue line before Aleksander Barkov negated the rest of the advantage with an offensive zone penalty.

With Luongo on the bench in the final minute and Florida having a 6-on-4 advantage, Dubnyk did not allow any second chances.

“That’s big on the penalty kill. You want to eat it up when you can,” he said. “Not just that, but obviously guys get tired working the puck around our end. It just makes everybody feel a little bit better when you don’t have chaos in front of the net so I was fortunate to be in a good spot tonight.”

Minnesota, now with points in each of its last nine games, is two points behind Calgary for the final wild card spot.

Florida, meanwhile, is in a similar position in the Eastern Conference. Memories aside, the Panthers and Nick Bjugstad leave the “State of Hockey” trailing Boston by four points. As nice as the goal was, it wasn’t the souvenir Bjugstad wanted to take back from St. Paul to his new home.

“It would have been better with a win, obviously,” he said. “Either way, it’s fun to play in this building, but it would have been better with a win.”

The post Bjugstad homecoming bittersweet appeared first on Minnesota Hockey Magazine.

Minnesota riddles Corey Crawford with shots but can’t solve him

ST. PAUL – The Wild capped a dramatic few days in the hockey world by registering their fifth game of the season with 40-plus shots on goal in front of the 20th consecutive home sellout crowd Thursday night.

The end result, however, was a 4-2 loss to the Chicago Blackhawks, Minnesota’s ninth defeat in its past 11 starts.

Nevertheless, coach Mike Yeo said, it was not a disastrous evening.

Yeo, who went off on his team at practice the day before, highlighted the overall details of this game in which his team was missing Zach Parise, Mikael Granlund, Darcy Kuemper, Keith Ballard and Nate Prosser for various reasons.

“It’s hard to be happy when you don’t win,” Yeo said, “but we were down 2-0 and we continued to play. We fell short in the game, but we gave ourselves a great chance.”

Parise, mourning the death a day earlier of his father, former NHL all-star J.P. Parise, missed his second game because of it. Granlund is recovering from wrist surgery.

They are two of Minnesota’s top forwards, but Jordan Schroeder came up from Iowa and Jason Zucker continued a stretch of sterling play, allowing the Wild offense to shake off the absences of the other two.

Minnesota outshot the Black Hawks 44-20 but could not solve the goaltending of Chicago’s Corey Crawford.

“This was a good step in a positive direction,” Wild winger Jason Pominville said.

“The passion tonight, the effort tonight, I thought were the best in a long time,” winger Thomas Vanek added.

Yeo, who went all in with his on-ice tirade in front of Twin Cities and visiting media members Wednesday morning, got exactly what he was looking for.

He said he told his players at the morning skate Thursday that they could play great and win or lose but could not lock up a spot in or out of the playoff race, no matter the result. All they could produce, he noted, would be the proper attitude and the proper work ethic.

Done.

“What’s important,” Yeo said, “is that we get back to the process of what it takes to make the playoffs. … Looking at the game, we play like that night after night, what it takes to make the playoffs with that kind of consistency, we give ourselves a good chance.”

The mood in Minnesota’s dressing room was somber but positive. After getting blown out by Dallas over the weekend and losing in lackluster fashion in overtime to San Jose on Tuesday with Parise missing, the Wild exhibited the kind of play they produced early in the season.

Although they have won just four of their past 15 games, there was zip in their play.

“We were short, that’s the bottom line,” captain Mikko Koivu said, “but I thought we had a good, 60-minute effort from everyone on the whole team, and that’s what we’re going to need to get out of this.”

Zucker, who scored his team-leading 15th goal and had five shots on goal, liked everything but the final score.

“If we play like that, we’re going to win games,” he said.

Pominville, whose goal and assist put him atop the team’s stats with 32 points, tipped his cap to Yeo’s tirade the day before.

“He wasn’t happy with what he saw and he let us know,” Pominville said. “It’s been a big story, but I think that was good; I think we needed that and guys responded the right way.”

With Kuemper on injured reserve for a lower-body injury, Nik Backstrom stepped in to stop 16 of 19 shots before the Hawks finished the evening with an empty-net goal.

Prosser worked out in the morning but sat out because of illness, and Ballard remains sidelined indefinitely because of a concussion and facial fractures.

In came Schroeder, a former Gopher, joining a line with former Gophers Vanek and Erik Haula and collecting a career-high seven shots on goal.

He earned praise from Yeo.

But Yeo, 36 hours after his eruption, had praise for just about everybody.

The team is not satisfied with a loss, he said, but players went hard after it all night and “that’s what we need right now.”

The post Winning effort, losing result appeared first on Minnesota Hockey Magazine.