(1C) Colorado Avalanche at (3C) Minnesota Wild
Western Conference Second Round, Game 3
Colorado leads best-of-7 series 2-0
9 p.m. ET; HBO MAX, truTV, TNT, SN1, SN, TVAS, CBC
ST. PAUL, Minn. -- It has been exactly 12 years since the Minnesota Wild won a game in the second round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs, a 4-2 win against the Chicago Blackhawks on May 9, 2014.
The drought could end Saturday in Game 3 of the Western Conference Second Round against the Colorado Avalanche at Grand Casino Arena, the first second-round game to be played here since May 5, 2015. If it does, the Wild will be back in the series.
"I'm excited just to see our fan base and how excited they are, how energized they are," Minnesota forward Nick Foligno said. "You can feel the buzz in the city. It's exciting because we want to get to our game and it's great to be able to do it, hopefully, in front of our fans."
If they can't, if the Avalanche ruin the biggest party in "The State of Hockey," they will have made NHL history, pulled within one win of the conference final and put the Wild on the brink of elimination all at the same time.
Colorado holds a 2-0 lead in the best-of-7 series having won Games 1 and 2 at home, 9-6, and 5-2, respectively. They are 6-0 this postseason, including a four-game sweep of the Los Angeles Kings in the first round.
With the Carolina Hurricanes 7-0 entering Game 4 against the Philadelphia Flyers on Saturday, the Avalanche are a win from this being the first time in NHL history two teams have started the playoffs with at least seven consecutive victories.
"The ultimate test will be tonight," Colorado coach Jared Bednar said. "This is a pivotal Game 3. We've played well through the first two games, (but) we feel like we can play better.
“They're going to be a desperate hockey team, and we need to go out and continue to play to our identity and be ready for what's coming at us, their first home game of the series. We're sitting in a comfortable spot, but we can't be comfortable."
The impact of Game 3 is obvious.
In NHL postseason history, teams that lead a best-of-7 series 3-0 have gone on to win 98 percent of the time (212-4), with 131 of those series ending in four games.
The history is better, though still not great, for teams that win Game 3 at home after losing the first two on the road. Those teams have gone on to win the series 21.9 percent of the time (33-118), but the Florida Panthers (second round) and Edmonton Oilers (first round) each rallied from 2-0 a year ago, starting with a Game 3 home win, before meeting in the Stanley Cup Final.
"I think you can really draw on the series we just came from," Wild coach John Hynes said. "We lost two games in a row against Dallas and won three straight. We had injuries against Dallas, we've got injuries in this series. So, I think even the group now, in that series that we went through with Dallas, there's a lot of valuable things we can draw on.
“How did we respond when we lost the double overtime game. How did we respond when we lost two in a row? What lessons did we extract? What's the method we had? I think that mindset and those experiences, it's no different for us now."
Here are 3 things to watch in Game 3:
1. Putting up the "Wall"
Jesper Wallstedt is back for the Wild. The 23-year-old rookie goalie will get the start after Filip Gustavsson allowed four goals on 22 shots in a losing effort in Game 2.
Wallstedt, who started Minnesota's first seven games of the playoffs, allowed eight goals on 42 shots in Game 1 against Colorado. That was his seventh start in 16 days, and he was coming off a six-game series win against the Dallas Stars when he had a 2.05 GAA and .924 save percentage.
To win Game 3, the Wild obviously need Wallstedt to play closer to the way he did against the Stars, and down the stretch of the regular season, when he was 4-3-2 with a 1.98 GAA and .930 save percentage in his last 10 starts, as opposed to how it went for him in Game 1.
"He played six unbelievable games, and that's why he can come back," Hynes said. "He played six unbelievable games and we won a series. And (Game 1) was a one-off, I think, when you look at how the series has gone and how both teams play. So, to me it's not so much, ‘Well how does he bounce back after a tough game?’ Let's take it this way -- six great ones to one that wasn't on him. So, there's a confidence built up in there."
2. Special teams
The Avalanche have owned this area in the series, going 3-for-7 on the power play, albeit with a short-handed goal against, and 5-for-5 on the penalty kill. Minnesota is 2-for-26 on the power play since Game 2 of the first round and 59.4 percent on the PK in the playoffs.
Colorado's two power-play goals in Game 2 were daggers, with Gabriel Landeskog extending the lead to 3-1 in the first period and Nathan MacKinnon pushing it to 4-1 in the third period.
"Power play, obviously, last game was a huge factor; so was the penalty kill," Bednar said. "Special teams won us a game, which is really good to see. But take the goals out of it on the power play, I like what they've been doing through the latter part of the L.A. series and in this series. It's a key."
The Avalanche were ranked 27th in the NHL on the power play in the regular season (17.1 percent) and 0-for-9 in the first three games against the Kings in the first round, but they are 4-for-9 in their past three games.
So, Minnesota spent a large portion of their practice Friday working on the penalty kill, with what amounted to a scout team mimicking Colorado's power play.
The Wild feel they have been late on rotations and out of position in-zone. They believe they're allowing the Avalanche too much space to come through the neutral zone, leading to easy zone entries, which becomes a bigger problem when you're then losing battles in the defensive zone.
"We feel great about our game 5-on-5," Minnesota forward Marcus Foligno said. "We've just got to make sure the penalty kill, when it hops over, just has a little bit more anger towards it of getting the job done."
