Pregame: Six Things for Game 6

ST. PAUL, Minn. – Home is where the Wild is. That much is a given. But is home where a win resides? 

It better be if Minnesota would like to extend their first-round series against the Dallas Stars to a seventh and deciding game on Sunday.

It’s been a strange playoff year overall and of course a strange series involving the Wild and the Stars. Big picture, as of Thursday morning home teams in the playoffs were 14-23. That includes a 1-1 record thus far for the Wild.

But I thought it interesting when Dallas Head Coach Pete DeBoer was asked about the struggles of the home teams over the course of the first round. He said he couldn’t explain the phenomena but guaranteed that all 16 coaches in the playoffs wouldn’t trade the opportunity to play at home in Games 5 and 7 regardless of their records.

The fact is, this is the Wild’s Game 7 at home, just one game earlier. Find a way to win a single game at home and then hope the team rides the visitors’ wave to a victory in Game 7. 

“For the most part, our group has handled adversity very well throughout this series,” Head Coach Dean Evason said Friday morning. “We haven’t executed in some areas. We haven’t probably got enough breaks, and in different situations as far as breaks and calls and bounces and all of that kind of stuff. We’re expecting us to work to provide those and to gain those breaks, not wait for them to happen. We’ll expect them to happen here tonight because of the way we’re going to play.”

“It’s not like it’s 3-0, right? We’re in a real good spot. Great spot,” Evason said after the team returned from Dallas following a 4-0 loss in Game 5. “We have the opportunity, now in our home building, to win one game and even the series and then we get into Dallas and we’ll see what happens. We’re excited.”

The players with whom we spoke after practice Thursday and on Friday morning seemed to share that same sentiment. The fact Mats Zuccarello did not skate either Thursday or Friday is troubling although Evason said he hopes that all players who skated in Game 5 will be available Friday night for Game 6.

That would include both Zuccarello and Ryan Hartman who took Thursday off as well.

“We think everyone’s available but you never know, right?” Evason said Friday morning. “Going through the process here today and we’ll know our lineup after warmup.” Oskar Sundqvist would likely be the option if Zuccarello cannot go in Game 6.

As far as the Stars, it’s possible, if not likely, that Joe Pavelski, who has been skating with the team since mid-week and skated Friday morning, will return to the Dallas lineup after being injured in Game 1. 

And so, without further ado, here are Six Things for Game Six: 

Embrace The Moment, Or, Fun Not Fear

There’s something absolutely unique about an elimination NHL playoff game. One team stands on the verge of being able to forget everything that happened in the first round, good and bad, and think about being one step closer to a Stanley Cup and the realization of every hockey player’s dreams. The other team stands on the verge of having all that taken away for another season. And yet, for the team facing elimination, there is also the hope – and dare we say belief – that it’s not their time. There’s no magic answer for being able to put away the fear of having your season suddenly come to an end but to try and approach it with a sense of joy, a sense of opportunity, as opposed to a sense of dread at what may happen at the end. Easier said than done, I suppose. If I was told that I had to write one column on Friday and if it was good enough to write another one on Sunday, how would I respond? Not sure. On the other hand, this is what players live for, these kinds of moments of truth.

“I mean the excitement goes up even more (in an elimination game) that’s for sure,” said veteran winger Marcus Johansson who will play in his 109th NHL playoff game on Friday. 

“I mean every game in the playoffs, obviously very exciting and adrenaline and all of that. It goes up even more I feel like, naturally, in a game like this. But it’s going to be a lot of fun. I think we’re ready for it,” Johansson added. “We win one game at home. We play like we have been 5-on-5. We score a few more goals we’re going to be in a good place I think. This is our rink and I feel like they come here to beat us. And then it’s Game 7.”

As Matt Boldy noted, every team that goes the distance faces moments like these along the way. It’s how a team defines itself.

“Lots of teams have been here. We’ve been here. You have to go through this,” added Evason. “We have to go through this adversity to get to where we want to go and this is a good step for us. This is a good opportunity for us to play our best hockey right now. We’ve played really good. There’s no question that we’ve had spurts, they’ve had spurts, we need to have our best spurt starting in a couple of nights.”

Finding Enough Offense Part 1

We’ll get to the special teams (I wanted to save that to the end like a big surprise), but in general the Wild will need to solve the Jake Oettinger dilemma who somehow became the first NHL netminder to shut out a team from his birth state in the Stanley Cup playoffs in Game 5. Go figure. What isn’t or shouldn’t be surprising is that Oettinger has elevated his game as this series has progressed. After allowing 10 goals through the first three games of the series he’s allowed two in the last two games stopping 59 of 61 shots over those games, both Dallas wins.

There are two parts to solving Oettinger. One is a big-picture plan for making his life miserable. That means crowding him as much as possible, making him move side to side (which he does remarkably well), working to dig in on rebounds for the greasy goals that have been elusive in this series both at even strength where the Wild have been the superior squad and on the power play where they have not. That is a stylistic look at the offense. Get pucks to the net, follow hard (but not too hard that it leads to penalties). 

Finding Enough Offense Part 2

When the Wild was winning two of the first three games think about the skilled plays that led to goals and by extension those victories. Mats Zuccarello and Johansson both beat Oettinger with high lasers in Game 3. Sam Steel scored on a breakaway with a quick release in Game 1. There have been high danger chances the last couple of games but the skilled players on the Wild haven’t found a way to finish. That has to change. So there’s that.

There is also the ongoing situation when it comes to two of the team’s brightest young stars, Kirill Kaprizov and Matt Boldy. Kaprizov scored on the power play in Game 1 on a nice deflection of a Jared Spurgeon shot. He is without a point since. Boldy has yet to score and has three assists. He does lead the team in shots on goal with 19 but his shot totals game by game look like this; 7, 7, 3, 0, 2. Does Evason consider mixing up his top three lines trying to find that right blend that will unlock the considerable skill that Boldy and Kaprizov possess? It would seem imperative if the Wild is going to force a Game 7 that one or both play an important role in creating offense in Game 6 whether it’s with the man advantage or at even strength.

“Not going to lie we’ve talked about different combinations for sure,” Evason said. “We’ve got a big blender. This is our team. This is our group. We can make a few changes. We’ve got people, depth, that we’ve talked about all year that we feel can come in and play. We believe that they’ll get the job done, the guys on the ice will get the job done.”

Both Kaprizov and Boldy said they believe sticking to the game plan and believing in the process will put them on the right track.

“Show up and play my game,” Boldy said. “I have high expectations for myself but I always have. Try to show up and play my game.”

“For me personally obviously it’s a bit frustrating,” Kaprizov said Thursday through an interpreter in his first meeting with the press in the playoffs. “But I’m confident this next game I should break through and be able to help out the team and do more on my end.”

Do You Believe In The Theory Of Being Due?

As in, do you believe that Boldy and Kaprizov are due? Do you believe the Wild is due to start a game on a positive note? The last two games, again, both losses, were marked by starts that were either uninspiring, as in Game 4, or cataclysmic, as in Game 5 when Marcus Foligno was assessed a major for kneeing Radek Faksa and given a game misconduct 2:14 into the game. A strong start, which might include a goal or two, would be a welcome tonic for the Wild. Further along these lines, do you believe that the Wild isdue to not get eaten alive by the Dallas power play? And is it due to make the Stars pay for their indiscretions when they commit fouls?

“It’s about desperate time and survival mode and just playing our best hockey,” said Foligno who has been a central figure in this series and who earned his own category below. “You don’t want to think about Game 7, it’s about winning one game now. We have two wins ahead of us, we’ve done that many times this year. We understand that.”

As for making sure that all bills come due, it starts with the mental approach to the game.

The Moment You’ve All Been Waiting For: Special Teams Talk

It may be wearying to discuss the Wild’s penalty kill and power play woes but that’s because there is no bigger story in this series than the disparity between the two team’s special teams play. 

There is, and should be, comfort in the fact that Minnesota has been every bit as good as Dallas at even strength, even better depending on the metrics you use. The Wild has scored eight of their 13 goals at five-on-five. That’s two more than Dallas’s six five-on-five goals. 

But the Stars don’t need to score at even strength because they have nine power play goals to the Wild’s four. No team in the playoffs have as many power play goals as the Stars.

In order for even strength to mean something in Game 6, the Wild has to find a way to negate the special teams discrepancy. Couple ways to do that. Stop going to the box is one way. 

Capitalizing when they get opportunities is critical. In Game 5 the Wild had three straight power play opportunities in the second period while trailing 2-0 but could not find a way to get a goal to make the game competitive. 

“I think just we have to be smarter,” forward Marcus Foligno said. “Yeah, it’s a special teams battle right now and we’re not on the good side of that. We have to understand that taking no penalties is going to benefit us and just be ready to come play our best game of the year Friday.”

“Our lineup’s our lineup. And we’ve got to get the job done,” Evason said. “Has our special teams been good enough so far? No. Is it going to be? Yeah. We believe it’s going to be. We believe it’s going to win us a hockey game. The penalty kill’s going win us a hockey game. A big power play goal’s going to win us a hockey game and our five-on-five is really solid.”

Foligno Factor

For me the one guy who epitomizes both the team’s identity and belief in what is being built here and the frustrations of this series is Marcus Foligno. 

He’s scored a big power play goal for the Wild in Game 3. He’s had a number of glorious chances including a breakaway and equally glorious rebound shot in Game 4 that didn’t go in. Of course he was at the heart of two controversial penalty calls in Game 4 and then the major penalty and game misconduct moments into Game 5 that not only put the team in a hole having to kill off a five-minute major but also left the team short a forward in a game they chased all night. 

Whew. 

“It’s been an eventful series, eh, for myself?” Foligno asked rhetorically on Thursday. Eventful is one way to put it. But if there’s a guy who would love to have a hand in pushing this series to the limit it’s Foligno. In fact I’d say it’s got “Hollywood” written all over it.

“I mean I should go from villain to the hero real quick so I think you can do that in Game 6. That’s all I’m looking forward to. I’m looking forward to getting back playing with the guys,” Foligno said. “Obviously it’s been, you lose myself and you’re playing 11 forwards, it’s difficult when you’re playing against a team like that. So, I’m excited to get a chance to redeem myself and our team to redeem ourselves in a sense of just playing a full 60 we get last change which helps us and matchups just got to get to Oettinger and we’ll be fine. But I really like the way we’ve been playing 5-on-5. And understanding that’s where we’ve got to keep that game.”

Evason has said he doesn’t want his team to change its identity, just be smarter. He specifically isn’t looking for Foligno to change his game at this critical juncture.

“If Marcus Foligno skates around and doesn’t bump anybody, is he going to be effective? No,” Evason said Friday. “Do you want me to bring him in and say, ‘Marcus, stay on the perimeter, don’t touch anybody because then you won’t get a penalty.’ No. He’s going to play the game, he’s going to play hockey how it’s supposed to be played. He’ll play hard, he’s never cheap, never head shots or anything like that. He’s just playing the game hard, just the same as the rest of our group. We’re going to do that within the rules and hopefully stay out of the penalty box and when we do get into the penalty box, hopefully we kill them all.”