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Bruins vs Red Wings

Wild not satisfied holding series lead against Blues

Saturday, 04.18.2015 / 12:44 PM

By Louie Korac - NHL.com Correspondent / Blues-Wild series blog

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Wild not satisfied holding series lead against Blues

ST. LOUIS -- The Minnesota Wild, who lead their best-of-7 Western Conference First Round series against the St. Louis Blues 1-0, will not make any lineup changes for Game 2 on Saturday (3 p.m. ET; NBC, NBCSN, SN, TVA Sports 2).

Coach Mike Yeo inserted Sean Bergenheim in as his fourth line left wing for Game 1. That means forward Matt Cooke, who had an undisclosed injury earlier in the week and was thought to be available for Game 2, will be scratched.

On Friday Yeo said that everyone was healthy. So Cooke, who missed significant time earlier in the season following sports hernia surgery, is available to play.

"I don't really see a reason to [change the lineup]," Yeo said.

With the Wild holding the series lead, Yeo said he is eager to see how players respond looking to get another leg up in the series.

"We don't want to sit around and say, 'Oh, it's a long series,' or anything like that," Yeo said. "I think the idea is when you grab the lead, you want to push harder and try to extend it. I think for us to feel any kind of satisfaction or be overly pleased with ourselves, I don't think you're going to see that with our group. We know it's going to be a tough test. All we can do right now is make sure we put our best game on the ice and go all-in with the way that we have to play and see what that gives us."

Even after winning Game 1, the Wild said they feel like they can be better moving forward. They've been on the other side of a series down 2-0. To win the first two on the road with the chance to go home for two, the hunger is there to win again.

"As a player you don't think about that stuff," left wing Zach Parise said. "Of course it feels a lot better to be up 2-0 than down 2-0. But these series are long. But as a player you don't pay attention to the statistics of what road teams that win Game 1; we don't pay attention to that. We don't know that stuff. We have to pay attention to getting the second game."

And as goalie Devan Dubnyk said, winning Game 1 doesn't win a series.

"It's real nice to get that first one and get it out of the way. Now we can stop talking about it because you're not in search of that first one anymore," Dubnyk said. "I remember seeing [Ryan] Getzlaf say something recently that one win the playoffs doesn't mean anything and that's certainly true. I think we're all going to treat it like we did the game in the regular season and understand that we need the next one and move on from there. We've done a good job in the last couple of months, we'll continue to do that, and I'll do that as well."

Here are the projected lineups:

WILD

Jason Zucker - Mikko Koivu - Chris Stewart

Zach Parise - Mikael Granlund - Jason Pominville

Thomas Vanek - Charlie Coyle - Nino Niederreiter

Sean Bergenheim - Kyle Brodziak - Justin Fontaine

Ryan Suter - Jonas Brodin

Marco Scandella - Jared Spurgeon

Jordan Leopold - Matt Dumba

Devan Dubnyk

Niklas Backstrom

Scratched: Ryan Carter, Erik Haula, Jordan Schroeder, Christian Folin, Nate Prosser, Darcy Kuemper

Injured: Keith Ballard (concussion), Matt Cooke (undisclosed)

BLUES

Dmitrij Jaskin - David Backes - T.J. Oshie

Alexander Steen - Jori Lehtera - Vladimir Tarasenko

Jaden Schwartz - Paul Stastny - Patrik Berglund

Steve Ott - Marcel Goc - Ryan Reaves

Carl Gunnarsson - Alex Pietrangelo

Jay Bouwmeester - Zbynek Michalek

Barret Jackman - Kevin Shattenkirk

Jake Allen

Brian Elliott

Scratched: Olli Jokinen, Chris Porter, Chris Butler, Robert Bortuzzo, Ty Rattie, Niklas Lundstrom

Injured: None

Status report: Kuemper joined the Wild on Friday after being left behind for Game 1 because of an illness. He's expected to be the third goalie for Game 2.

Who's hot: Pominville had a goal and an assist in Game 1. ... Parise had two assists in Game 1.

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