Postgame Hat Trick: Blues 5, Wild 1

Wild.com's Dan Myers gives three takeaways from the Wild's 5-1 loss in Game 6 of its First Round playoff series against the St. Louis Blues at Enterprise Center in St. Louis on Thursday night:

1. Tough way to end
One of the more difficult things about this six-game series loss to the rival Blues is that it was hard to see this one coming.
Minnesota entered the postseason playing awesome hockey, having outdueled St. Louis down the stretch to secure home ice in this matchup.
The Wild led this series 2-1 after three games and with a shorthanded Blues backend in Game 4, it had a golden opportunity to take a commanding 3-1 lead in a playoff series for the first time.
But ever since St. Louis regained the momentum in that game, Minnesota has been unable to get it back. The Blues won on home ice, went to Xcel Energy Center and staged a comeback win, then never trailed on Thursday night en route to ending Minnesota's historic season much earlier than many anticipated.

"It's tough to put into words right now just how close this group was and how positive the regular season was," said Wild forward and alternate captain Marcus Foligno. "It's just disappointing because we just feel like we were right there with them and played a hard series and had a lot of positivity around this team this year and thought that we could do something special. So, when you don't get the job done, especially in crunch time and time where you do it and fall through, it's disappointing for sure."
It was always a tough matchup. Minnesota finished the regular season with the second-most points in the Western Conference, while the Blues had the fourth-most. But with divisional playoffs, one of the West's best teams was going to go home in the First Round.
There will be plenty to come on the season that was for the Wild -- a completely re-written team record book, franchise records for most wins and points in a season ... but there's no doubt the ending will stick in the craws of many for quite some time, including the players, who were stunned in the immediate aftermath.

"Obviously we're disappointed," said forward Mats Zuccarello. "There was a belief that we were going to come back to Minnesota for a Game 7. Our goal was to move forward."
With salary cap tightness on the horizon, this promises to be a busy offseason ahead for Wild General Manager Bill Guerin and his staff. And Wild.com will be there to document all of that too.
Unfortunately for the Wild, the eyes will turn to the offseason sooner than anyone wanted.
"I don't think you can say they outplayed us. I think they out-managed the game better than we did and played smarter," Foligno said. "They got the lethal offense. You still look at some of their players that don't score, there's a lot of good players that didn't get on the board from their team who we did a good job shutting down, but they had four or five guys that had multi-points or multi-goal games and rose to the occasion and we didn't. And that was the biggest difference."
2. Not so special
Other than the score, the Wild got exactly wanted it wanted from an opening period. With Cam Talbot getting his first game action in nearly two weeks, Minnesota limited St. Louis to just four shots on goal, drew penalties in the other end and had the better of the scoring chances.
But none of that matters if you can't capitalize, and it was the Blues that scored the only goal of the period, doing so on a 1-on-5 play into the Wild's defensive zone where it allowed Nick Leddy too easy of a screened shot.
Minnesota outshot the Blues 10-4 but couldn't capitalize on a pair of power-play chances, a theme that has haunted it virtually the entire series.

The Wild's special teams struggles were perfectly encapsulated early in the second, when the Blues outshot Minnesota 3-0 on a Wild power play, then took all of a few seconds to score its second goal of the night mere seconds into a power play, a goal which made it 2-0.
After Tyler Bozak pushed the Wild deficit to three, Vladimir Tarasenko buried another power-play marker late in the second to make it a four-goal game headed to the third.
Matt Dumba made it 4-1 early in the third and the Wild got a power play and a chance to at least make it a little bit interesting a couple of minutes after that, but came up empty yet again with the man advantage, which was essentially the final nail in the coffin.

"There were some times where it shined and there was a lot of times where it didn't," Foligno said. "We took a lot of penalties, too. That doesn't help you when you're going up against a really, really good power play. So our power play has to be better, our penalty kill has to be better."
The Wild finished the game 0-for-5 with the power play, and finished the series 4-for-24 (16.7 percent) on the man advantage overall. All four of Minnesota's power-play goals were scored on home ice, as the Wild went 0-for-13 in three games at Enterprise Center.
St. Louis tallied at least one power-play goal in every game of the series and went 2-for-6 in Game 6, finishing the series 8-for-26 (30.8 percent).
"Some games are really good special teams and we won those games," Zuccarello said. "I think it was an even series. Those games we lost, they outplayed us in special teams. That was the difference."
Minnesota's inability to get its struggling penalty kill and inconsistent power play ironed out late in the regular season ended up being a big reason why its season came to an end much sooner than it was hoping.
"They have to be better, simple as that," Evason said. "I'd love to tell you why and all that. They're going to get better. They have to get better. They literally sucked all year. We had stretches but you can't not score. Obviously we just got beat by a team their special teams were way, way better than ours and they sucked. We've gotta get better from day one next year."
Put even more simple terms?
"Special teams were not special for us," Foligno said, "and [they] were special for them."
3. Second-period struggles
Even though it trailed at the first intermission, the Wild had to believe it could salvage the effort if it was able to replicate that effort in the second period.
Needless to say ... it couldn't.
St. Louis overwhelmed Minnesota in the middle frame, scoring three goals and outshooting it by a 22-5 margin, opening up a 4-0 lead through 40 minutes.

"Normally we're okay, no worries. We're good, hang in there, and our group says all the right things," Evason said. "For whatever reason, we just got real tight and just kept going from there."
All season long, the Wild has handled downturns with aplomb. It has battled back from deficits, overcome injuries, managed to play its best when it has needed its best.
For whatever reason, on Thursday night, it couldn't muster that magic one more time.
"I honestly think our team's defined by our resilience. If you look at the games and how we've played, all year's been positive up to this point. We've been resilient. We've been able to handle adversity. We've 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 ... 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.
"Obviously, it's ramped up, a little more pressure, all that stuff and we've got to get to a point where we can handle it to get to the next round."
The Blues, who were fantastic in the second period during the regular season -- running up a plus-51 goal differential -- outscored the Wild 8-2 in the middle period during the six games in this series, a major factor in St. Louis moving on.

Loose pucks

• Jon Merrill and Dmitry Kulikov assisted on Dumba's third-period goal, earning their first postseason points in a Wild uniform
• Kulikov was in the lineup for the first time since Game 1
• Connor Dewar scratched into the lineup for his first career playoff game
• Nic Deslauriers missed the game with an undisclosed injury
• Talbot finished with 22 saves
• Jordan Binnington stopped 25 of 26 shots to earn his third consecutive victory
• Colton Parayko finished with a goal and an assist
• David Perron had two assists

Dan's three stars

1. Ryan O'Reilly
   2. Jordan Binnington
   3. David Perron

Highlights