10 Takeaways: The Wild Aren’t Doing Enough To Stop the Avalanche

The Wild struggled on the penalty kill against the Stars, and that has continued. The Avalanche weren’t all that great on the PP this year, but they improved immensely after the Olympic break. Against Minnesota, they’re 3-for-7, though they gave up a shorthanded goal on one of their failed opportunities. Colorado is also 5-for-5 on the penalty kill, on a full 10 minutes of PK time throughout the series.

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10 Takeaways

1. You’re not going to lose a lot of games when Nathan MacKinnon is playing like this, if you’re the Avalanche. He had one point through the first three games against the Los Angeles Kings. Since then, he’s put up three points in three consecutive games. Against the Wild, MacKinnon has two goals and four assists for a total of six points on the 14 goals Colorado has.

2. Martin Necas scored a beautiful opening goal, giving him five points in this series. It wasn’t noticeable in the opening round, but this looks like a series where Necas is doing the Mikko Rantanen thing, riding shotgun with MacKinnon shift after shift and being another superstar that can produce.

Head coach Jared Bednar had a great response when asked about Necas’ playoff production, as he works through the reputation he had in Carolina of not being much of a playoff producer. Here’s his full response:

“Some of the criticisms on Marty from his younger years prior to being here, they may have been valid. Marty and I talked about this. Byt just because something’s true one day doesn’t make it true the next. And especially over time, Marty, he’s put in a lot of hard work to be a trusted player on our team defensively. It was one of the talks we had when he got here, and a handful of times after that.

“If you’re going to play with Nate and play against opposition’s best guys every night, I got to be able to trust you. You can’t play there, no matter how good you are offensively, right? So he buys into that. The style, the players he plays with, it’s important that he’s on that line, because he helps them a lot, and his game has grown, you know? So I think those criticisms now are invalid.”

3. Jake Middleton has been on the ice for nine goals against, while Jared Spurgeon has seen eight Avalanche goals go in. That’s Minnesota’s second pair without Brodin available. Wild head coach John Hynes said he’s going to look at changing up the pairings but I’m not sure how many options he has without Brodin. I doubt you’re breaking up your top pair of Quinn Hughes and Brock Faber. And the third pair, whether Zach Bogosian, Jeff Petry, or Daemon Hunt, don’t play all that much.

4. I know Kirill Kaprizov had the first Wild goal, but they’re going to need a lot more from him and Matt Boldy in this series. Those two guys, along with Hughes, are far and away the three guys that need to carry the team. Hughes has been fine. He was better on Sunday than in Game 2.

But Kaprizov and Boldy have to do more. Especially Boldy.

5. Speaking of which, the best save, by far, was Scott Wedgewood robbing Kaprizov on the doorstep on the Minnesota power play early in the third period. Just a spectacular save to keep the Avalanche ahead by two goals.

6. I said it after Game 1 and I’ll say it again. The Wild stand no chance in this series if they can’t stop the Avs’ rush attack. Allowing MacKinnon that much space in two games isn’t a recipe for success. I’m curious to see how Minnesota looks on home ice — if Hynes getting the last change makes a difference.

As of right now, he hasn’t found a way to contain the Avs’ speed.

7. I know the 2022 Nashville Predators weren’t that great of a team as the second wildcard, but Bednar is now 6-0 against Hynes in the postseason. He and the Avs swept Hynes’ Predators in the opening round in 2022. It’s quite the change from facing (and losing to) Pete DeBoer seemingly every year or so.

8. For what it’s worth, Parker Kelly absolutely got away with accidentally punching the linesman in the face during one of those scrums in front of the net.

9. When Nic Roy scored to make it 3-1, he became the 11th different Avalanche skater to score a goal in the series. And it came just over 81 minutes into the series. I’ve seen overtimes go longer than that without any one goal scorer, let alone 11 different guys on one team.

Valeri Nichushkin’s empty-netter broke a record, as the Avalanche became the first team in NHL history to have 12 different goal scorers in the first two games of a series.

Rather than list the guys who scored, it would be quicker and easier to name the six who still haven’t. It’s Brock Nelson, Ross Colton, Logan O’Connor, Parker Kelly, Brent Burns, and Brett Kulak. I’m not listing them to call them out. More doing it because it’s actually hilarious that we’re two games into this series and 12 of 18 skaters have a goal.

10. Speaking of Roy, he had the quote of the night after the game. He was asked how to not let the emotions of a 2-0 series lead get to you when there is still work to be done.

His response: “Never too high, never too low. I think that’s what I got in mind. I mean, enjoy it a little bit today, rest tomorrow and go back to practice. Look at what you you can do better from from the game today, and go from there.”

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