This is a pattern I've seen from the Wild all year...sometimes it works, sometimes...like tonight, it bites them in the butt.
After high scoring, emotionally awesome victories, this team tends to get wayyyy too cute. 6-7 times they made one pass too many and lost out on a scoring chance. Heck, I remember seeing Johansson (I think) being 4-5 feet in front of the goalie all alone and he turned outside because he didn't have a passing lane or a high % shot. What happened? He turned the puck over. Not even a shot on net.
That pass that lead to Klingers goal....completely stupid pass across ice that should have lost possession if it weren't for an absolutely perfect/lucky bounce. And what did he do? He just threw the puck at the net and something good happened.
When you have a hot goalie, you throw EVERYTHING at the net hoping for a bounce because you're not beating him clean. Both our goals came from just getting the puck to the net.
Also....I know the penalties were B.S. but at some point, you need to stop their power play. We've had 16 PK's in 4 games. They've scored on 7 of the 16.
The Stars PP is 43.8%
Completely unacceptable in the NHL playoffs. I mean, that's historically bad. They're an inch away from 8/16 on the PK.....you can't give up 50% on your PK and expect to win especially when you're taking 4 penalties per game.
The Wild have had 17 PP's with 4 goals for 23.5%. Better than our regular season of just over 21% but when they're scoring on just about half of their PP's....you can't expect to win.