The Minnesota Wild have been on the brink of elimination before, and the Colorado Avalanche learned the hard way that the Central Division club knows how to claw their way back into it.
Now the Dallas Stars have gotten their first taste of Wild desperation hockey, failing to punch their ticket to the second round with a 5-4 overtime loss to Minnesota at home in Dallas in the early minutes of the extra frame.
The Minnesota Wild got off to one of the hottest starts of the playoffs early in the contest, scoring two quick goals in the first few minutes of play with glove side capitalizations by both Mikael Granlund and Jordan Schroeder.
Seeing Schroeder score was what should have been a big momentum builder for the Wild, as it was the forward’s first playoff goal at the NHL level after years of struggling to stay in the league full-time. He would finish the game with almost 12 minutes of ice time to boot. Between his enthusiasm and the early jump, the Wild should have been able to control play moving forward.
That wouldn’t prove to be the case. Despite the Wild holding their lead through to the third period, they eased off of their strong start and were almost chasing from behind chances-wise for the rest of the game. A collapse in the third period saw the Stars score three of their four goals in the first 10 minutes of the final frame, and it took last a last-minute equalizer to push the Wild to their ultimate overtime victory.
The real story wasn’t the lost momentum. It was even-strength opportunities.
All eight goals scored in regulation came in 5-on-5 play, a marked difference from the special teams battle seen in Dallas’ Game 4 victory just a few days ago, and the highest-scoring period–the third, which saw a combined five goals scored between the two clubs–was the only one with no penalties taken by either team.
The Wild will now head home with hopes that the Devan Dubnyk they saw in the third period and overtime will be the Devan Dubnyk they see in Game 6, which could help them force the series to play out to seven contests with a home victory.
The netminder, acquired in the winter of 2015 to help the Wild with a plummeting regular season, stopped 37 of 41 shots faced for a .902 save percentage in all situations – a noteworthy increase from the sub-.900 he’d been posting up to that point. It didn’t do much to raise his overall series percentage, but good performance when his team was getting shelled (as they did in the third period and into overtime) will go a long way towards saving his club’s season.
For the Stars, there’s now a question in net.
The Texas club started off their playoff series with goaltender Kari Lehtonen serving as their starter, but moved beyond him after a poor Game 3 – despite him putting up a combined .931 save percentage in the games he did start.
Antti Niemi, who assumed the role of starter for Game 4 and Game 5, put up an impressive performance in his first start to pull the club within one win of taking their first playoff series since 2008. His showing in Game 5 was far from where it needed to be, particularly in the opening minutes of the game. A .792 save percentage in all situations saw Niemi stop just 19 of 24 shots faced.
The team has been good for plenty of offense in front of their goaltenders all year, but they’ll need to see fewer lapses if they want to win the series – and then if they want to make a deep playoff run.
The Wild will need to see their goaltending stabilize, but they’ll need more than that.
Things are looking too hot and cold to be confident heading into Minnesota’s upcoming Game 6, and that will have to change if they want to force Game 7. Jared Spurgeon and Ryan Suter were the team’s highest ice time blueliners, and also their best possession players – but both Marco Scandella and Nate Prosser were horrendous at preventing shots against (allowing 41 and 21 Corsi events against each, respectively) and even players like Nino Niederreiter had off games possession wise.
The offense was there, but it wasn’t sustained. That will need to change on Sunday when the two teams face off once again.
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