Post-Game Talk: Wild swept by Chicago

[BB88]

Right wing line?

Pominville-Stewart-Fontaine-Schroeder line.

 

[Arturia Pendragon]

Ugh, haven't been able to watch much of the series thanks to finals xD!
Gotta say, the Wild are getting pretty much what they deserve. You can't give a team a 3-0 lead in game one and expect to win, much less give them the puck (turnovers) in game two and expect a W.
I only caught a bit of yesterday's game and it seemed like the Wild played well but had no finish.
Credit to the Hawks, they make you pay if you can't bury your chances. Hopefully we win game 4!

 

[Nino Noderreiter]

The veterans are holding this team back. Other than Parise that is.

 

[tomgilbertfan]

There’ll be plenty of time for postmortem stuff if the Wild is eliminated, but I crunched the numbers today and there are some bigtime playoff indictments.

You can read all that in the main story in Thursday’s paper, but the numbers by Mikko Koivu, Jason Pominville, Thomas Vanek and Ryan Suter the past three playoffs have to be concerning to Wild brass.

Like I said, I’ll get more into it after the season if the season indeed ends this round, but the go-to guys don’t produce in the playoffs. That is a fact and the Wild will need to face that fact and figure out why or how to fix it.

Yeo is also going to have to find a way to get through to Vanek. I watched the game again this morning. I counted six times he stopped inside the blue line, five where he turned the puck over and once where he basically did because his pass didn’t connect with Charlie Coyle when Coyle drove the net.

This is absolutely not the way the Wild is supposed to play. This is absolutely not the way Vanek said umpteen times he’s supposed to play just one day before.

The Wild’s gameplan is to get pucks behind Chicago’s defense and try to wear the Blackhawks out. The one time it has done that in this series, it was successful. That is how it rallied from three goals down in the first half of the second period of Game 1.

The problem with playing deep in the offensive zone is it requires hard work. It requires hard work to score and it requires hard work to retreat if the puck is turned over.

Perhaps that why Vanek is seemingly unwilling to follow the gameplan. These turnovers just feed into the Blackhawks’ counterattack game.

http://www.startribune.com/sports/blogs/302846501.html

 

[Wild11MN]

Regarding Toews against Parise.

http://www.nhl.com/ice/news.htm?id=766672&navid=nhl:topheads

 

[nickschultzfan]

To me the rw line is holding this team down, fix that in the offseason and I don't see that many weaknesses.

Exactly. Parise-Zucker-Nino are three good LWs. As much as Koivu has been offensively impotent, Granlund and Coyle are continuing to improve and we can start considering Koivu our 3rd line center.

That leaves a bunch of ineffective RWs. Pominville screws up ever scoring chance. Vanek can't play RW or LW anymore. Stewart has been as advertised. Great for 10 games, then complete vanished. Schroeder/Fontaine are ok role players, but not on a contender.

Wild are in major trouble because they need an elite scoring RW, a power forward RW, and a quality top-9 RW who can bring a lot of different qualities. Where are those guys going to come from? Yakupov?

 

[Generic User]

I'm also noticing our third forward is playing close to the blue line, while the Hawks forwards are playing deeper in our end and don't rush out as quickly as our guys do - this is part of the difference why they're sustaining pressure in our zone better than we are in theirs.

We're so afraid of getting caught out of position we're actually making it easy for them to almost do just that while shooting ourselves in our own foot offensively.

http://www.startribune.com/sports/blogs/302846501.html

Uh oh. Yikes.

Can't say we weren't warned about Vanek, though. He's exactly as advertised so far..

 

[BusQuets]

Exactly. Parise-Zucker-Nino are three good LWs. As much as Koivu has been offensively impotent, Granlund and Coyle are continuing to improve and we can start considering Koivu our 3rd line center.

That leaves a bunch of ineffective RWs. Pominville screws up ever scoring chance. Vanek can't play RW or LW anymore. Stewart has been as advertised. Great for 10 games, then complete vanished. Schroeder/Fontaine are ok role players, but not on a contender.

Wild are in major trouble because they need an elite scoring RW, a power forward RW, and a quality top-9 RW who can bring a lot of different qualities. Where are those guys going to come from? Yakupov?

Tuch? Shame he's probably 2-3 years away though.

 

[Paul Bunyan]

A lot of the people in my section sold off their seats for every game so far. I think there is only a few groups in my section that have still shown up for the playoffs.

Last year was a kick to the nuts the way it ended. Maybe this 0-3 will be easier to swallow. More time to accept the run is over.

It's a shame they sold them for all the games, but my "hockey family" is intact all through the playoffs, however it now seems we have some regular "playoff fans" that are in the rows in front of us judging from the last two years who I didn't see during the regular season. Either upgraded their seats or just come for the big ones, never talked to them.

The 830 start is a problem too. It wouldn't be AS BAD on a weekend, but during the week it's killer for most people. The NHL needs to sort that out since it seems just the Central gets screwed there (maybe Calgary has had one too? Cannae remember).

 

[llamapalooza]

Really glad we only gave Vanek a 3-year deal. Lots of people were expecting him to max out on term; what a catastrophe that would have been.

 

[gphr513]

Today is the day of reckoning.

GDT up.

 

[gphr513]

Swept.

 

[Lapa]

This team pisses me off sometimes.

 

[Elias Pettersson]

Literally 0 people got the prediction right in the poll. Wow

 

[Billy Mays Here*]

**** the veterans on this team not named Parise.

 

[Arturia Pendragon]

Eh, life goes on.
Credit to the hawks, they are a great team! I will forever wish that we have a player of Kane's caliber someday.

 

[josephwild123]

Literally 0 people got the prediction right in the poll. Wow

Yeah... I picked the Wild, Ducks, Rangers, and Senators for conference finals. This has been one odd playoffs

 

[57special]

So he finally takes Pominville off the point and puts in Dumba during the last period PP. Was that so ****ing hard?

Can we bribe the Austrian government to draft Vanek into the army? We would get cap relief then , right?

 

[thestonedkoala]

Pathetic. I'm not even mad. Just absolutely pathetic. Heads need to roll for this embarrassment.

 

[ghjkfdhgfd]

nothing worse then a boring loser team. i want them to win so bad every year. yet, they remain to be wussy boring losers.


cya in fall.

 

[NHL1674]

Played the Hawks 3 straight years. This was their worst showing, yet it was the best roster. Yep. Makes sense.

 

[123TripleDoge]

1. proof there are no hockey gods
2. proof there is no god
3. proof mn sports are cursed
4. proof hockey sucks

 

[Arturia Pendragon]

Pathetic. I'm not even mad. Just absolutely pathetic. Heads need to roll for this embarrassment.

Ahhh, now to sit back and watch what CF does with the roster.
*grabs popcorn*

 

[llamapalooza]

Somehow I just knew not to get too excited there...

https://youtu.be/Owv1SqXnVO8?t=345

 

[hirawl]

I think it's now clear to everyone that Suter's minutes need to go down next season. As much as he manages his energy, he clearly was running on empty in the post season.