NHL: Wild’s latest playoff loss to Blackhawks raises more questions

By Chad Graff
St. Paul Pioneer Press
ST. PAUL - In a somber locker room after the Wild’s season ended Thursday night in familiar fashion, Zach Parise struggled to put the frustrations of another lost season into words.
He stared at the floor and shook his head and said it was “tough to dissect” everything that went wrong as the Wild were swept by the Chicago Blackhawks in their Western Conference semifinal series.
Last year, the Wild won two games and skated toe-to-toe with the Blackhawks in a second-round playoff loss. They were outclassed two years ago but still managed to win Game 3 at the Xcel Energy Center.
This time, not only did the Wild fail to win a game, they failed to take a single lead, struggling even to keep the score tied - which they managed for less than a quarter of the series’ 240 minutes.
The sweep revealed that, despite all of the Wild’s personnel changes and raised expectations, little has changed. If anything, they appear to have taken a step back since last season after pushing the Blackhawks to overtime in Game 6.
The short series showed that the Wild have many areas that need addressing. But foremost, it showed for a third straight time that Minnesota’s core group can’t match that of the Blackhawks - a troubling fact considering the teams both reside in the Central Division and that Chicago’s two best players, Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews, are just 26 and 27, respectively.
Kane had five goals in this year’s series. That’s as many goals in four games as Minnesota’s top-paid forwards - Mikko Koivu (0), Zach Parise (3), Jason Pominville (2) and Thomas Vanek (0) - have in a combined 46 playoff games against Chicago.
Still, when asked if the Blackhawks’ best players have outperformed the Wild’s best players, Minnesota coach Mike Yeo said, “I don’t think that.”
The statistics say otherwise.
The Blackhawks’ four highest-paid forwards - Kane, Toews, Marian Hossa and Patrick Sharp - have combined for 23 goals against the Wild in their past three postseason meetings.
Although the matchup with the Blackhawks has exposed multiple areas of concern, the biggest appears to be the top-level talent gap.
“I think we have to look at ourselves in the mirror,” Wild defenseman Ryan Suter said. “We have a lot of good parts here.”
Those parts brought the Wild a playoff series victory for a second straight year, each against the division champion - Colorado in 2014, St. Louis this season - the sign of a good team. But as Yeo put it after Thursday’s 4-3 loss: “We’re a good team, and we have to find a way to be the best team.”
That raises the ante on an offseason that wasn’t shaping up as a barn-burner. While still a team full of young talent, the sweep puts into stark relief the fact that Minnesota’s five highest-paid players are all 30 or older.
Further, goaltender Devan Dubnyk, who helped raise the Wild from the dead with spectacular play after being acquired in a midseason trade, is 29 and an unrestricted free agent.
None of the seven teams still competing for the Stanley Cup have a roster structured that way, so it remains for the Wild to weigh their solid successes against the risk of moves that might put the team over the top.
When Suter was asked whether changes are needed or current players need to be better, the veteran defenseman said, “Both.”
“We’re trying to figure it out,” he added, “and I think you’re on with both of them.”
Last summer it was determined the team needed more offense, and general manager Chuck Fletcher responded by signing Thomas Vanek, who had averaged 31.9 goals in nine NHL seasons.
The former Gopher, though, failed to record a goal in 10 playoff games, finishing the postseason a minus-7. He wasn’t the only top player who failed to produce, but it stood out the most because of his high-profile signing and past success: two seasons with 40-plus goals.
“Their scorers scored when they needed to with timely goals, and I didn’t,” Vanek said. “I think that’s really the difference - timely scoring.
“I tried staying positive because I knew I just needed one to get me going. I didn’t find that one, and that’s on me. I let them down.”
He was far from the only Wild player to struggle.
In three series against the Blackhawks, Koivu has zero goals and a minus-13 rating. Pominville didn’t score this series until late in the third period of Game 4, and that’s after a regular season with a career-low 18 goals. Suter has a minus-12 rating in 15 playoff games against the Blackhawks.
And yet there was a feeling around the team that because of the strong goaltending it received from Dubnyk and as an impressive first-round victory over the perennially good Blues that this year’s matchup with the Blackhawks would be different.
Instead, it was more of the same, only a little uglier.
“You feel it’s a waste of a year because we had a chance and we were playing some good hockey coming into the postseason, and we proved it in the first round,” Pominville said. “But it wasn’t good enough in the second round.”
Coyle to Team USA
Wild forward Charlie Coyle is headed to the Czech Republic to play for Team USA in the world hockey championships.
Coyle is a late addition to the team, which is 4-1 in preliminary-round play and leads Group B with 12 points. The Americans beat Denmark 1-0 Friday after losing to Belarus for the first time ever on Thursday.
The U.S. next plays Switzerland on Sunday.