Wild need to stay disciplined to close out Stars
To the surprise of nobody, the first-round series between the Minnesota Wild and Dallas Stars has been immensely entertaining.
As the series, tied at two games apiece, shifts back to Dallas for Tuesday night’s Game 5, there is some surprise in how we’ve gotten to this point, as the Stars’ top players have seen their production concentrated to special teams rather than 5-on-5 play.
On Tuesday’s episode of Daily Faceoff LIVE, host Tyler Yaremchuk and co-host and former NHL goaltender Carter Hutton discussed how 5-on-5 play is going Minnesota’s way, but an inability to stay out of the penalty box has been keeping Dallas afloat.
Tyler Yaremchuk: Most people expected the series between the Minnesota Wild and the Dallas Stars would go the distance, go deep. It was on paper a fantastic matchup, and so far it’s been exactly that, as they head into tonight. One thing that kind of has surprised me, if you like I thought, for Minnesota to have a chance here they were going to need their big dogs to be, no pun intended, to be stars, right, and you look at what they’ve gotten so far. The big dogs on Minnesota versus the big dogs on Dallas, this is their 5-on-5 on-ice numbers in this series. With Eriksson-Ek on the ice, 4-0. 6-0 for Kaprizov. 6-0 for Hughes, 6-0 for Boldy, 6-1 for Faber. You compare that to Rantanen and Heiskanen and Lindell, 0-3, 0-3, 0-5. Lindell’s supposed to be the guy going down and shutting down the other team’s best players. Rantanen is supposed to be the superstar difference maker in this series, and so far it’s been, surprisingly, Minnesota’s big dogs who are kind of eating Dallas’ lunch.
Carter Hutton: It’s been a big factor in this series, and that’s five-on-five play, which is probably the hardest way to create offense right now in the NHL, and in the playoffs, everything that’s magnified. So that being said, why is this series even, right? You’ve got to look to special teams. You’ve got to stay out of the box. You have to be smart with everything that’s going on because what you see there is a power play that’s buzzing at 42%, which is unbelievable. Wallstedt’s been very good too in this factor… But you need to be smart, because right now the Dallas power play, they’re thriving off of it, and it’s keeping them in this series. You don’t want to look back and be like, ‘Oh we kind of let them hang around,’ because that is how it feels right now… You’re letting them hang around because your penalty kill isn’t able to match your power play.
You can watch the full segment and the rest of the episode here…