Wild dominate in Vancouver, but Kevin Lankinen and 1 bad shift cost them: 3 takeaways

By / / Sports / 8 minutes of reading


VANCOUVER — Hockey can be cruel sometimes.

In a game where the Minnesota Wild had 16 high-danger chances to the Vancouver Canucks’ four at five-on-five, according to Natural Stat Trick, in a game where the Wild had 3.69 expected goals, according to MoneyPuck, the great goaltending of Vancouver’s Kevin Lankinen (who had 37 saves), three hit goal posts and one bad late third-period shift cost the Wild during a 3-1 defeat at Rogers Arena on Friday.

“That’s as frustrating as it gets, a game like that,” said defenseman Brock Faber, whose third-period power-play goal tied the score at 1-1. “I thought we outplayed them 80 percent of the game maybe, 75 percent of the game. I mean, probably doubled their Grade-A chances. Those ones are as frustrating as they get.”

Especially this time of year.

The desperate Canucks leap-frogged the Calgary Flames to get into a playoff position. The desperate Wild, who have dropped four of their past six, fell into the top wild-card spot and suddenly only eight points up on the Flames.

But in a game where the Wild outworked and outplayed the Canucks during the majority of the second and third period, one bad shift by two-thirds of the fourth line and the third defense pair led to Kiefer Sherwood’s winning goal with 3:45 left in the third period.

“It’s a little bit of a broken play, to be honest with you,” said coach John Hynes, who noted the Wild probably had four plays just like that and didn’t cash in. “It wasn’t so much of a structural thing. I mean, that’s what happens sometimes when you put a lot of pressure on a team, and you have all kinds of different looks. Sometimes, it comes down to a bounce.

“You get in tight games, and it’s a tie game. I thought that we had the majority of the opportunities in the game. We didn’t capitalize on ours. And sometimes, it’s a broken play that just happens. And that’s truly what happened.”

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The loss came seven hours after a trade deadline in which the Wild didn’t make any moves Friday but added Boston Bruins winger Justin Brazeau on Thursday in exchange for Marat Khusnutdinov and Jakub Lauko. Brazeau made his Wild debut Friday after a long travel day.

But even with Kirill Kaprizov, Joel Eriksson Ek and Jonas Brodin sidelined indefinitely, the Wild think they have a good enough team to go into the playoffs feeling confident.

“I feel like we’ve barely had our full squad all year,” said Marcus Johansson, who had six shots and 10 attempted. “We’ve been battling with a lot of big names out, and we’ve done a pretty good job. I feel like when we can get our full lineup together. I think we have four really good lines and three good D pairs. I mean, there’s nothing really to complain about, I think.

“We need to get everyone healthy and put ourselves in a good spot for the playoffs, and then we will see what happens.”

The Wild spent the night in Vancouver and will return to Minnesota on Saturday to open a seven-game, 14-day homestand Sunday afternoon against the Pittsburgh Penguins. If Marc-André Fleury starts, it’ll be the future Hall of Famer’s final game of his career against his old Pens.

On Oct. 29, Fleury made 26 saves in a 5-3 win at Pittsburgh during an emotional farewell.

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“It’s a hard league to win in, but if we ice the game that we iced tonight, we’re going to give ourselves the best chance to win most nights,” Hynes said. “It’s an emotional part of the season. There’s times when you lose, you can’t get too down, and when you win, you can’t get too high because the games are going to come basically every other day for the next few weeks, and pretty much close to the regular season.

“So tonight we put it on the ice. We gave ourselves a chance to win the game. We didn’t do it. We’ve got to rest and recover, and then we got make sure that we take the next opportunity, which is Sunday, ice the same game with the way that we want to play it. And we’re going to give ourselves the best chance to win games.”

Wild penalties ruin first-period momentum

Despite three successive shifts of immense pressure by the Wild in the first period, after being unable to score, fourth-line center Devin Shore hopped the boards for his shift and immediately took a hooking penalty to suspend momentum.

The Wild put forth a terrific kill where they didn’t allow a shot on goal, but as the penalty expired, Zach Bogosian was called for holding.

Well, you know what happened next to the NHL’s 31st-ranked penalty kill. Elias Pettersson, who hadn’t scored since Jan. 21, let rip what had been his rarely-efficient one-timer this season and snapped a 15-game goal drought.

It was his second goal since Christmas.

With Khusnutdinov and Lauko traded, the Wild used some new penalty killers like Johansson and Matt Boldy. Boldy had played 7:03 of penalty kill time all season before Friday’s game and didn’t get in the shooting lane for the goal by Pettersson.

As goalie Filip Gustavsson said a few days ago, “It’s about getting to the playoffs. It doesn’t matter how we do it. We just have to figure out something that works for us. PK has been terrible stat-wise all year.

“It doesn’t matter if it’s 32nd in the league when the season stops. We just need to figure out how to be good in the playoffs for the PK to work because otherwise you don’t win in the playoffs.”

One thing that’ll help the PK? Big saves like this at the end of a second-period kill.

Brazeau debuts

After a 12-hour travel day from waking up in Raleigh, N.C., to touching down in Vancouver, Brazeau made his Wild debut on the fourth line with Yakov Trenin and Shore.

He played nine shifts and had two hits and a blocked shot.

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Khusnutdinov was an unfinished product, and who knows what his ceiling will be, but president of hockey operations and general manager Bill Guerin said Friday that the Wild were looking for “something different,” and that’s a 6-foot-5 power winger with a good shot below the dots who loves to get to the net.

“Listen, for his role, he’s got good numbers — 10 goals, 10 assists,” Guerin said. “He’s got size, he’s good around the net. I just think the size really helps us.”

Brazeau didn’t get the greatest opportunity in his first game. He only played two first-period shifts because of the back-to-back penalties, but he looked solid in his limited action and criticism of his skating seemed exaggerated.

“A bit of a crazy day,” Brazeau said. “Obviously, a lot of emotions. Kind of haven’t really gone through anything like this before, and obviously, (it was) a little bit of (a) longer day with the travel from Raleigh. But the guys are great, welcoming me in when I got here and making me feel really comfortable, so it was good.”

Brazeau said he had a sense a trade was coming down for a Bruins team that essentially held a fire sale with trades of captain Brad Marchand, Trent Frederic, Charlie Coyle and Brandon Carlo.

“I kind of had a feeling something might be coming in,” he said. “Obviously, you’re never fully ready for it, but yeah, I kind of had a feeling something was gonna happen the last couple of days, so just trying to be ready for anything, mentally ready for that, and I just kind of go with the flow of it.”

Hynes liked Brazeau’s game even though he had heavy legs at the start.

“I give him a lot of credit,” Hynes said. “I think he’s got good hockey sense, he gets to the net. I liked that line in general, and he brings some good size, brought some physicality to the game. So, it’s nice. I thought for under the circumstances that he had, I give him a lot of credit. I thought he showed up to play for our team tonight in a strong way.”

Goals aren’t coming easy

Since Jan. 9, the Wild have ranked 30th in the NHL with 2.38 goals per game. Of those 21 games, 18 have come without the injured Kaprizov.

Friday’s loss was a prime example of how hard it is for them to score.

They completely outchanced the Canucks, yet had one goal to score for it — none at even-strength — and hit the goalpost three times (Shore, Boldy and Gustav Nyquist, who had no points in three games since being reacquired by the Wild last Saturday from Nashville).

On the power play that Faber scored, it was Minnesota’s sixth shot on net. Marco Rossi had three of them.

“It’s an emotional time of the season. And every loss sucks even more,” Rossi said. “But I think we can’t be too low. It was a pretty good match. We outworked them. We had really a lot of chances. And I think if you criticize something, it’s maybe we should score more goals.

“Doesn’t matter who’s in the lineup and who’s missing. Obviously, we’re missing some good players, but I think that can’t affect us. Just got to keep going. We showed some good hockey today. Just got to keep going and the puck bounces will come.”

(Photo of Kevin Lankinen: Bob Frid / Imagn Images)





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About The Author

Avatar of Fannie Hogan
Fannie Hogan is a writer and editor who covers lifestyle, books, sports, education, and tech. She's always loved to write—from the time she was a little girl writing stories about talking animals to the day she got her first job as an editor at a lifestyle magazine. Her hobbies include long walks on the beach, running, and taking breaks from work to read a good book.

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