A simple, clean four-letter word has defined the Minnesota Wild all season, from the highs of a hot start, to the lows of a mess of midseason injuries, to the euphoria of finding a last-minute route to the playoffs, to the ups and downs of Round 1 versus Vegas.
Hard.
So, with the season literally on the line, and the Wild facing a “win or put away the blades for a few months” Game 6 versus the Golden Knights at Xcel Energy Center on Thursday, it was no surprise to hear coach John Hynes reiterating the innate difficulty — for both teams — of an elimination game.
“It’s hard to win,” Hynes said, meeting with reporters at TRIA Rink during his team’s optional morning skate at home. But he went on to clarify that the “hard” concept is applicable to everything, not just the happenings on a 200 foot-by-85 foot ice sheet.
“Whatever you choose, it’s not easy,” he said. “It’s hard to be in shape. It’s hard to be out of shape. It’s hard to win. It’s hard to lose. If you lose, there’s not a lot of fun that happens with that. But if you win, it’s hard to win, so you’ve got to be able to choose what you want to do.”
With Hynes noting that he does not feel momentum is a factor, despite Vegas winning the previous two games in overtime and grabbing the series lead Minnesota once held, he instead focused Thursday morning on the fact that the Wild have been playing desperate, backs-against-the-wall hockey for the past month or so. Just getting into the playoffs was hard, so the hard they prepped for on Thursday in Game 6 was, in a way, more of the same.
“Like at the end of the regular season for us, you’re going to come in and you’ve got to beat Vancouver,” Hynes recalled. “After you beat Vancouver, then you’ve got to beat Anaheim. Just because you beat Vancouver, the job’s not done.”
It’s the same in the other locker room, the coach said, where Vegas still needed a win in one of the final two games of the series to advance, which is the expectation every year of a fanbase that has never really known hard times since the franchise was born less than a decade ago.
Vegas went into Game 6 facing some of the same manpower challenges that bedeviled Minnesota much of the season, with the Golden Knights’ leading goal scorer Pavel Dorofeyev scratched from the Thursday night lineup after an injury (classified as day to day by Vegas coach Bruce Cassidy) that kept him off the ice for the end of regulation and the overtime in Game 5.
So with a series lead, the Knights went into Game 6 needing to find a way to close out Minnesota without a key player, which sounded like a hard task. In keeping with his season-long mantra, maybe that was just the way the Wild’s coach envisioned things playing out.
Okposo named to NHLPA staff
After closing out the on-ice portion of his hockey career with a Stanley Cup title a year ago, St. Paul native Kyle Okposo will be working to make life better for NHL players in his next chapter.
On Thursday, the NHL Players Association named Okposo, 37, as an advisor in business development and player engagement. After parts of two seasons with the Minnesota Gophers, Okposo went on to play more than 1,000 NHL games over a 17-season career. The bulk of his time was spent with the New York Islanders and Buffalo Sabres, but Okposo was traded to Florida late last season and played 17 games in the Panthers’ run to their first NHL title.
“I’m thrilled to join the NHLPA at this time of growth opportunities for the players,” said Okposo, in a statement. “I was involved with the PA over the course of my career, and I have seen first-hand the staff’s work on behalf of players. I am excited to add my perspective and experience to that work and further expand opportunities for NHLPA members.”
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