The Wild learn a painful lesson
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by user Leslie Monteiro
When the Stanley Cup playoffs started couple of weeks ago, there were high expectations for the Minnesota Wild. The team and their fans expected a great run.
There were visions of this team hoisting the Cup along with a parade at St. Paul.
Unfortunately, reality came in.
It started when the Anaheim Ducks had a 2-0 series lead against the Wild. There was a feeling that this series was going to be a quick one.
Anaheim made sure that there was no hope by winning 2-1 in Game 3 despite the Wild’s best effort in this game as they were forcing lot of shots at the Ducks goaltender, Ilya Bryzgalov, who made all those saves.
The Ducks put an end to the Wild’s misery on Thursday night as they won the series in 5 games.
There were three things that stood out in this series:
• This was a mismatch between both teams.
• The Ducks know how to get it done in the playoffs
• Most importantly, the Wild have so many things to do before they can be a legitimate Cup contender.
There was a school of thought that the Wild can match up well with the Ducks because of their firepower offense.
Unfortunately, guys like Marian Gaborik, Brian Rolston, Wes Walz, Todd White, Pierre-Marc Bouchard, Mikko Koivu, and Brent Burns did next to nothing. There was a reason for that.
Anaheim has so much depth with defensemen that are big in size. Those guys did such a good job of wearing them down by being physical through clutching and grabbing.
It is like facing a brick wall out there when the Wild are trying to get to the Ducks territory with the Ducks players at bay.
The Wild just struggled to win the war of attrition against that team. The Ducks made them look like men among boys out there with that style of play. It just shows you that scoring is easier said than done.
Playoff experience is so important. The Wild were able to get by when they made the playoffs for the very first time in 2003.
In retrospect, the Wild faced a very old Avalanche team in the first round and then faced a Canucks team that was soft on defense not to mention they never had a goaltender.
This is the first experience of this team failing in the postseason. Every young team goes through that.
The Ducks found a way to get it done in the playoffs based on what made them successful in the playoffs. They just know how to get it done over the years.
They just know how to make plays in the postseason whether it is getting the loose puck or blocking shots or knowing to have more puck possession. Knowing how to get it done is very essential at this time of the year.
They have gone through the trial and errors while the Wild really have not outside of one fluky year.
The Wild got so much work to do before they can be a Stanley Cup contender. It was a harsh lesson that the team and their fans learned in this series.
There is more than just scoring in hockey. Playoff hockey requires a team doing the dirty work such as fighting to get the loose puck, pushing and slowing down the other players, showing toughness when the other team bullies them, and etc.
They need to get those types of gritty players to complement the finesse players that are.
They can talk about how it would have been different had they faced another team, but it would have been the same old story had the Wild played the Nashville Predators, San Jose Sharks, Dallas Stars, or the Detroit Red Wings.
The only positive thing that came out of this series was that the Wild players decided to stand up for themselves by fighting with every Duck player out there in the final game of the series. It was nice to see Burns, Derek Boogard, and even Gaborik punched some of the Ducks players back.
What can the Wild do to get better? They need to continue to develop bigger and faster players that will be able to do the things that are required in the playoffs. The young stars such as Bouchard, Koivu, and Burns need to continue to improve as players.
They need to get players who have been through the playoff wars via free agency so spending again is going to be important. They need to get someone who knows how to score power-play goals.
It stinks that the playoffs ended that way, but this team may have been better off that way because now they are forced to learn something out of this.
