Talbot can't save Wild from elimination in Game 6 loss

ST. LOUIS -- Cam Talbot was not the answer for the Minnesota Wild, who were eliminated from the Stanley Cup Playoffs by the St. Louis Blues with a
5-1 loss in Game 6
of the Western Conference First Round at Enterprise Center on Thursday.

The goalie, playing for the first time since April 28, made 22 saves but could not slow down the Blues, who won the final three games of this best-of-7 series to advance to the second round for the first time since winning the Stanley Cup in 2019.
The Blues will play the Colorado Avalanche in the second round. The Wild failed to advance after finishing second in the Central Division.
Marc-Andre Fleury, acquired in a trade with the Chicago Blackhawks on March 21, started the first five games. He went 2-3 with a 3.04 goals-against average and .906 save percentage.
RELATED: [Complete Wild vs. Blues series coverage]
Talbot could not recapture the momentum with which he finished the regular season. He was 13-0-3 in his final 16 appearances.
Talbot said it was a tough ask to come in cold with the Wild facing elimination.
"Obviously was I disappointed?" Talbot said of the decision for Fleury to start the series. "Yeah. [Angry]? Yeah. But [the coaching staff] expected that. They want you to be [angry]. I mean, who doesn't want to play in the Stanley Cup Playoffs? But I respected the decision, of course."
The change to Talbot in place of Fleury was a last-ditch effort inject life into a team that let a 2-1 series lead slip away. The Wild also inserted defenseman Dmitry Kulikov and forward Connor Dewar into the lineup for Game 6.
"Again, we are going to second-guess, and we are going to evaluate them; we're going to talk about decisions we could have and should have made," Wild coach Dean Evason said. "We make a call to put three players in today. We hope that that is the right decision and gives us a boost. We'll have to sit down and evaluate if it was, or it wasn't. But it's too soon right now to get into that."

The playoff-tested Fleury won the Stanley Cup three times with the Pittsburgh Penguin (2009. 2016, 2017) and took the Vegas Golden Knights to the Cup Final in 2018. But he had lost each of the previous two games, allowing four goals in each. Talbot came in 0-3-3 with a 5.06 goals-against average and .825 save percentage in his previous six starts against the Blues.
St. Louis, meanwhile, pulled off the goalie switch expertly earlier in the series. Jordan Binnington made his first appearance in Game 4 with the Blues trailing 2-1 in the series. He allowed five goals in his three starts and made 25 saves in Game 6.
St. Louis outscored the Wild 15-5 across the final three games.
"We've been a bounce-back group and we got to this spot tonight and we didn't handle it very well," Evason said. "Why? We're going to have to sit down and evaluate, individually and collectively. Evaluate and see what we feel went wrong and why we were so good at handling that adversity all season and then, all of a sudden, boom."
The Wild started strong in Game 6, holding the Blues to two shots through the game's first 14 minutes.
The third shot, however, proved to be a back-breaker. Defenseman Nick Leddy was allowed to reach the attacking blue line with speed, no Wild player closing on him. Leddy, using Kulikov as a screen, snapped a wrister that beat Talbot to the short side at 14:58. St. Louis then scored three times in the second period
"It has to be save from that far out," Talbot said of Leddy's goal. "We had a good first period and that one gets in and gives them some momentum.
"I thought we did a good job battling back after that in the first and taking momentum back. Obviously, penalties in the second killed us. They don't need help scoring goals so that first one has to stay out of the net."
The team that scored first won each of the six games in the series.
"There was a belief that we were going to come back to Minnesota for a Game 7," Wild forward Mats Zuccarello said. "Our goal was to move forward."
Talbot says he wants to remain with the team despite the disappointment not starting the playoffs after the best of his nine NHL seasons (32-12-4, 2.76 GAA, .911 save percentage). The Wild had a record-setting season with the most wins (53) and points (113) in their history.
"This is a special group," said Talbot. "I do have one year left [on my contract] and I'm just excited to be a part of this team and this group, that locker room.
"So as much as that hurt, this is still a group that I believe in, a group that I'd like to be a part of. It's a special team."