Brian Murphy: Beware of the Wild as they are inevitable
When it comes to playoff teasing and emotional sleight of hand, you have to stand back in awe at the all-time heavyweight champion of false hope and exaggerated potential in this tortured sports market.
Your Minnesota Wild.
Before yanking that football away from Charlie Brown, Lucy would genuflect before this forlorn franchise as it continually commands buy-in.
Here’s the thing. Loitering the next two months and cross-referencing remaining games with games in hand only deepens the denial among the faithful who chase the final wild card spot like it’s the Ark of the Covenant.
It’s lunacy, folks. We should all know better by now that this isn’t going to end well, even if the Wild hammer and tong their way into the last Western Conference playoff spot.
Then along comes a game like Monday’s riotously entertaining gong show at Xcel Energy Center, a matinee of madness for a sellout crowd that felt like celebrating President’s Day at a QAnon retreat.
Minnesota’s 10-7 victory over the NHL’s best took an ax to the team record book and some obvious doubts with a scoring blitz that left players and coaches grasping for context.
“It’s nuts. It’s weird,” said winger Matt Boldy. “I don’t think I’ve ever been a part of something like that where they just kept going in one after another.”
Referees Jon McIsaac and Pierre Lambert handed out penalties like candy. Eleven minors against both teams that produced an eye-popping four 5-on-3 advantages for the Wild, who converted three of them among four power-play goals.
Joel Eriksson Ek had a hat trick. So did Kirill Kaprizov. And Canucks center J.T. Miller.
Boldy, Mats Zuccarello, Marco Rossi and Jonas Brodin also scored for Minnesota, which set a franchise record for goals in a game, including six straight. No Wild team in their 24-year history ever scored four goals faster than the 2:17 it took in the third period to erase a three-goal deficit and forge a lead they would not relinquish.
Despite Vancouver cutting their margin to 8-7 with 2:08 remaining, a pair of empty-net goals gave Minnesota the field-goal win.
There also was a goalmouth scramble measured by a sun dial as the puck pinballed around a mashup of players and Vancouver goalie Casey DeSmith before Kaprizov buried the first of his three goals.
Two Wild goals deflected off skates. Another was disallowed because the net was knocked off its moorings before the puck skittered across the goal line. Starter Filip Gustavsson was benched for the third period in favor of Marc-Andre Fleury.
The teams combined for 17 goals on only 51 shots as three NHL goaltenders combined on a save percentage of .653 over 60 minutes of firewagon hockey.
“Didn’t seem like any lead was safe at any point,” said Ryan Hartman. “Stressful. Very stressful. But fun.”
Hartman echoed the duality of this game, this season and this decade-plus the Wild have spent trying to escape the throes of mediocrity and early postseason exits.
The Wild are alive, but not necessarily well, as they plow through a challenging stretch of games with little margin for error.
The have points in six straight since the all-star break after taking down the top-ranked Canucks. They are tied with Nashville with 58 points, two behind idle St. Louis in the playoff chase.
Minnesota flew Monday night to Winnipeg for a quick turnaround against the hardnosed Jets before traveling to scorching-hot Edmonton and Seattle, which is nipping at their heels.
Then again, scoreboard watching is a fool’s errand with 26 games remaining and four teams clawing for the same limited points on the table. Minnesota has no true identity, at least not one with any credibility.
The same team that poured in 10 goals Monday is the same one that blew a one-goal lead with 40 seconds remaining and lost in overtime Saturday to inferior Buffalo.
The same one that was smoked 6-0 at Xcel last month by hapless Anaheim only two days after yielding a critical loss to the Predators, also at home.
The same team that started 5-10-4 and got head coach Dean Evason fired Thanksgiving weekend.
The same one that has flamed out in the first round against beatable teams in Dallas and St. Louis the last two springs. One that has not won a series since 2015 or advanced past the second round since 2003.
Pour any true believer a shot of sodium pentothal and all sorts of hard truths will come spilling out about this wrung out roster and its inevitability. Too steep an emotional price to pay watching the boys grind their way into the final playoff spot only to crash in about 10 days.
Wild fans are conditioned to hang around until May before being liberated from another unfulfilling season.
This season’s timeline may hold steady.
But the gong has been pounded.
