For Chicago, their fresh air experience didn’t seem to help, as the Blackhawks (38-19-5) were mostly silent offensively and fell to 1-3-0 all time in outdoor games.
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“There were many moments where the game paused and you could reflect on the day and how lucky you were to be around everyone”, Wild Assistant Coach Darby Hendrickson said.
Neither goalie was a match for Minnesota’s suddenly enlivened offense.
When John Torchetti took over as the Minnesota Wild’s coach about a week ago, he had confidence that forwards Jason Pominville and Thomas Vanek could regain their scoring touch.
It’s going to take far more than four games before faith will be restored in this collection of players.
“It’s been a roller coaster for sure, from losing to Boston to [Yeo] getting let go, to Torch coming in, and us winning three on the road, and then coming home and having this big stage”, defenseman Ryan Suter said.
The Wild would leave most of the more than 50,000 fans happy, defeating the defending Stanley Cup Champion Blackhawks 6-1. Dumba crashed hard to the crease and popped the loose puck beyond the reach of Crawford’s blocker.
And snag they would as the Hawks were flat and flustered for the overwhelming majority of the game.
“It’s great Minnesota finally got a game”, said Jennifer Kuhlman of Esko.
Stamkos scored by sneaking in on a change during Tampa Bay’s fourth power play and ripping Tyler Johnson’s pass from behind the net past Ward.
We’ll spare you the details on this one; chances are you already saw them. Haula’s linemates have also flourished, as veteran Jason Pominville scored three goals and set up three others in the last three tilts while Nino Niederreiter collected two tallies and three assists in the last four games.
Patrick Kane ended Devan Dubnyk’s shutout pursuit with his Western Conference-leading 35th goal midway through the third period.
Corey Crawford has allowed 104 goals on 1,467 shots faced and Scott Darling has given up 34 goals on 412 shots. Matthias joins a formidable front line that includes scorers such as Matt Duchene, Nathan MacKinnon, Carl Soderberg, Gabriel Landeskog and Jarome Iginla.
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Rozsival was ejected for the hit and given a five-minute major penalty, and Zucker rode on a cart to the locker room. “He just played the man, unfortunately the player was injured”. Relatively speaking at this time of the year, it’s practically balmy here in the Twin Cities and in spite of a downpour earlier Friday morning, the forecast for the game appears ideal: maybe a little sun but not too cold to keep fans away (seats were still available as of Friday afternoon) and not too sloppy or sunny to effect the ice surface, with highs in the high 30s. The State of Hockey should be rocking for what proves to be a pretty important game for the home team, beyond the big to do of playing under the open sky at TCF Bank Stadium on the campus of the University of Minnesota. Wild rookie D Mike Reilly played in that game for the Gophers on a bitterly cold night, with temperatures hovering near zero.
