Ex-Bulldog Soucy draws rave reviews in NHL debut

St. Paul – Life without Ryan Suter officially began for the Wild Monday night in their final home game of the regular season.

Suter, Minnesota’s premier defenseman, is scheduled to undergo surgery to repair a broken fibula in his right leg and is finished for the remainder of the team’s play in 2017-18, the Wild announced Monday.

“I just feel really bad for him,” Wild coach Bruce Boudreau said. “He’s a guy that’s been pretty durable his whole life, so it’s probably pretty depressing for him. We just want him to get better.”

Suter’s absence didn’t seem to bother the Wild much Monday as they defeated the sagging Edmonton Oilers 3-0 in front of 19,189 at the Xcel Energy Center.

A Minnesota-centric blue line crew — including Elk River’s Nate Prosser, Eden Prairie’s Nick Seeler and former Minnesota-Duluth standout Carson Soucy making his NHL debut — helped the Wild zero in on a spot in the playoffs Monday.

The unfortunate news going forward is that Minnesota won’t have the benefit of playing the lackluster Oilers in postseason play, but that might be countered by Boudreau’s announcement earlier in the day that defenseman Jared Spurgeon will be back by then, if not before.

Nate Prosser and the Wild’s defensive corps made it a long night for Edmonton forwards on Monday. (MHM photo / Jonny Watkins)

Suter spearheads Minnesota’s blue line for every occasion — especially with Spurgeon sidelined since March 13 with a torn hamstring — but Jonas Brodin, Matt Dumba and Ryan Murphy joined Prosser, Seeler and Soucy for a solid performance against Edmonton.

The play of the six D-men made it a good night for goaltender Devan Dubnyk, who stopped 22 shots to post his 29th career shutout and fifth this season.

“I don’t think I saw one mistake out there,” Dubnyk said.

Boudreau, too, was smiling when it was over.

“Our defense was good tonight,” he said.

Soucy, who was playing for UMD in the Frozen Four a year ago, stepped in with a flawless performance.

“He did look poised,” Boudreau said. “I was — as we all were — very happy with his game.”

Soucy, who had three shots on goal and two hits in 15 minutes, 26 seconds of playing time, said it was a relief to step on the ice for the first time in an NHL game and he looked to the leadership of Minnesota’s current top pair: Brodin and Dumba.

“Brods and Dumba played great tonight and they’re going to take a load, which they did,” Soucy said. “I hope a couple of us others can get the minutes we can and just make it easier for them.”

Brodin, who was on the ice for more than 24 minutes, said Minnesota’s blue line contingent has work to do without Suter, but he voiced confidence that those manning the position will do fine.

“We’ll see when Spurg is back,” he said, “but yeah, right now we have the D we have and I think we played good today.”

The Wild outshot the Oilers 40-22 and controlled play throughout.

Their offense was fueled by another Minnesotan as Bloomington’s Zach Parise scored a goal in each of the first two periods to give him 12 goals and 16 points in his past 17 games.

“All around it was a pretty good game for us,” Parise said. “Our defensemen did a good job. Ryan’s a tough guy to replace, but I thought they did a good job all over the ice.”

The post With Suter Out, D Steps It Up appeared first on Minnesota Hockey Magazine.

Wild outplays Blues again but come up short in season-ending 4-3 OT loss

St. Paul – The most successful regular season in Wild history came to a deflating conclusion Saturday afternoon, finishing like a recurring nightmare where the St. Louis Blues simply suffocated Minnesota’s offense.

The post Not Good Enough appeared first on Minnesota Hockey Magazine.

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.

Wild stress positives after Jake Allen steals Game 1 for Blues in OT

St. Paul – Some days, it seems, you just can’t win.

The Wild learned that a few seconds after midnight on Thursday morning at the Xcel Energy Center as players tried to figure out how they could launch 90 attempts at the St. Louis Blues’ net and score only once.

“It was a heck of a game,” Wild coach Bruce Boudreau said.

It was, as 19,168 spectators could attest — until the Blues got a goal from Joel Edmundson 17 minutes and 48 seconds into overtime to record a 2-1 victory in the first game of a best-of-seven Stanley Cup Playoff series.

Boudreaux was heartened by the statistics: Minnesota outshot St. Louis 52-26 and fired another 38 shots that were either blocked by defense or went wide.

“We had 90-some shots at their net,” he said. “We had 52 shots on the net. I thought territorially we were pretty good. We had a lot of mistake-free chances, chances that would probably be quite in our favor, so that’s what I’m taking out of it.”

The first game of the series evolved into the Jake Allen story: Allen made 51 saves and missed only a shot by Zach Parise with Minnesota’s goalie pulled and just 23 seconds remaining in the third period.

Other than that: zilch.

Parise shook his head.

“It’s disappointing we didn’t get that one,” he said. “I thought we played well, generated a lot, didn’t really give up much. It’s unfortunate when you come out on the losing side of one of those.”

Allen, Parise added in a bit of an understatement, “played good.”

And then some, if you ask Boudreau or probably anyone else in the Xcel Energy Center Wednesday evening (and into Thursday).

“It didn’t look like we were going to get much by him, the way he was playing tonight,” Boudreau said.

“I thought he was phenomenal,” Blues coach Mike Yeo said. “Really not much to say. He was outstanding. He was challenged in so many situations and certainly stepped up.”

Minnesota dominated this game in every way but the final score, winning 59 percent of the faceoffs and outhitting the Blues 35-18.

Wild goaltender Devan Dubnyk faced less of a barrage than Allen, but was equally strong through 77 minutes.

However…

“The outcome wasn’t there,” Dubnyk said, “but I think if we play like that every game, we’re probably going to get good results. The important thing I guess when a game like that doesn’t finish how you want it to is to just make sure you keep doing what you’re doing. If we stick to that we’re going to be tough to beat.”

While Minnesota’s players tipped their hats to Allen, they also came away convinced about their own abilities.

“I think we can get a lot from that,” winger Jason Zucker said. “There’s a few tweaks that we’ll make, but we’ve got to bring that same intensity and that same grit to our game and push for 60 minutes.

“For us, there’s another six games to be played. Obviously it’s disappointing; we wanted to win this game, but overall we can’t get down on ourselves and sit back with a ‘poor me’ attitude. We’ve got to regroup tomorrow, come back the next day and make sure we’re ready to go.”

The end result seemed bizarre when you factor in things like this: Charlie Coyle was one of four Wild players with at least six shots on net, and one of his best opportunities came from the slot in overtime. 

He shattered his stick and the puck slid wide.

And, when the score was 1-0 in favor of St. Louis in the third period, the Wild lost a potential goal when Parise, falling and reaching for a loose puck behind Allen, actually stopped it from going in.

“Trust me, I know what happened,” he said. “I saw the puck squirting free and I tried to jump and poke it and I think my shaft hit the post and propelled the puck out of the net. That didn’t feel very good.”

It was just one of those days.

Probably setting the table for a few to follow.

Said Boudreau: “I expect the rest of the series will be the same, tight-checking, two good goalies going at it.”

The post Disappointed, Not Discouraged appeared first on Minnesota Hockey Magazine.

St. Paul — If you’ve wondered if the Wild are for real this season, they took a giant step toward demonstrating exactly that in a ferocious match against the Chicago Blackhawks Wednesday night at the Xcel Energy Center.

Erik Haula’s tying goal with 3:03 remaining in the third period forced overtime and the Wild claimed a hard-earned point despite succumbing 4-3 to a Blackhawks’ power-play goal in overtime.

Even with the presence of the biggest home crowd of the season at 19,326 plus a national TV audience, Minnesota had enough reasons on this night to sag a bit.

The Wild had finished a nine-day road trip through Canada less than 24 hours earlier, while the well-rested Blackhawks had not played in four days. In addition, the Hawks had lost the last eight meetings between the rivals and trailed Minnesota by six points.

They were pumped.

“Our biggest game of the year,” Hawks star winger Patrick Kane told Chicago reporters beforehand.

Then the Blackhawks grabbed leads of 2-0 and 3-2 and appeared poised for a regulation win behind an outstanding performance from goalie Corey Crawford, who finished with 35 saves.

But wait a minute.

This Minnesota team simply refuses to fold.

“It’s not always easy to come from a long road trip and play the first game,” captain Mikko Koivu said. “I thought we responded well.”

Erik Haula celebrates his game-tying goal late in Wednesday night’s 4-3 OT loss to Chicago. (MHM Photo / Jeff Wegge)

Indeed, second-period goals by Jared Spurgeon and Zach Parise tied the score at 2-2 and Minnesota was in high gear before Chicago regained the lead on Richard Panik’s goal late in the second period.

Not to worry. The Wild had one more comeback in them, getting a dazzling rush from defenseman Marco Scandella, who set up Haula at the doorstep for his team’s tying goal.

“We’ve been doing that all year, getting ourselves back in games,” winger Zach Parise said.

Easier said than done.

“I think it’s believability that they can come back,” Wild coach Bruce Boudreau said. “I mean, we never felt out of it by any stretch.”

Boudreau pointed out that the Wild could have scored four goals in the second period when they outshot Chicago 19-10, and they produced three more prime scoring opportunities in overtime before going short-handed on Ryan Suter’s holding penalty.

“That’s a pretty good team to have on the power play, 4 on 3 for two minutes,” Boudreau observed.

Jonathan Toews proved that when he slid the puck past goalie Darcy Kuemper 39 seconds into the 4 on 3, allowing the Blackhawks to finally get a regular-season win over the Wild and to draw within five points in the standings.

Nevertheless, the Wild had to leave the Xcel Energy Center feeling heartened: They outshot and out-chanced the Blackhawks, came from behind twice and totally earned a day off before they have to resume their eight-game homestand.

“It’d be like getting blood out of a stone to practice tomorrow,” Boudreau said after the game. “I think they left it all on the ice. I think Chicago did. That’s what makes it a great game — two good teams going at it and it ends up in overtime.”

It would be hard to ask for more.

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