As he wrapped up his press conference on Wednesday night at the American Airlines Center in Dallas, Stars coach Pete DeBoer took it as an opportunity to throw some shade. Asked about the officials having to dish out a handful of misconduct penalties to keep things from unraveling, DeBoer referenced how the Wild struggled to stay out of the penalty box during the regular season.
“Not surprised,” DeBoer said. “We know Minnesota takes penalties. They’re the sixth-most penalized team in the league. We’re ready for that.”
The statement was factually correct. The Wild did indeed finish sixth in the NHL during the regular season with 935 penalty minutes. Asked on Thursday afternoon if he heard DeBoer’s comments, Wild coach Dean Evason smiled and replied, “We watch all the press conferences.”
In that same breath, Evason used it as an opportunity to make a point of his own, noting how the Wild felt there has been some embellishment on the part of the Stars.
“We felt that they had some bigger people probably go down pretty easy in that hockey game,” Evason said. “It’s a fine line because we don’t dive. The Minnesota Wild don’t dive. There’s so many times I’d love to go in there and go, ‘You know what, guys? Let’s embellish.’ We want to draw penalties because of how hard we’re working and how gritty we are.”
Think of it as a shot across the bow with the first-round playoff series tied at 1-1 heading back the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul for Game 3 on Friday night.
As much as the Wild need to do a better job staying out of the penalty box, they are clearly lobbying for the officials to take note of what’s been happening on the ice. It’s no secret that the Wild are none too pleased with how star forward Kirill Kaprizov was targeted by the Stars defenseman Ryan Suter in Game 1 and Game 2.
‘We’ve talked about this before, Kirill, he takes a lot of abuse and he doesn’t go down very often,” Evason said. “He probably got hurt (earlier this season) because of it. We don’t do that. That’s not what we do.”
Will injured players be ready?
It’s still unclear if Joel Eriksson Ek or Ryan Hartman will return to the lineup for Game 3. It would seem on the surface that Eriksson Ek (lower-body injury) is a little further behind Hartman (lower-body injury) when it comes to recovery.
It’s worth noting that Eriksson Ek and Hartman both participated in morning skate Wednesday before missing the game.
“It’s too tough,” Evason said when asked if Eriksson and/or Hartman will be available for Game 3. “We jumped on the plane and the guys are going to go in right now. We won’t have a real good idea in the morning. It’ll likely be after that morning skate tomorrow that we’ll have some clarification.”
How to fix the penalty kill?
After emerging as a problem in last year’s playoffs, the Wild are once again struggling on the penalty kill.
In Game 1, they were 3-for-5 on the penalty kill. In Game 2, they were 3-for-6l.
“We have to correct some stuff,” Evason said. “There’s not really one theme. We certainly have dove into it and watched it very carefully. We’ll make some adjustments, for sure.”
