Brian Murphy: Wild's worst playoff letdown should put Evason on the griddle
Ladies and gentlemen of the State of Hockey jury, let the record reflect the 2022-23 Minnesota Wild season ended at 11:14 p.m. Central Daylight Time Friday like we all figured it would.
Meekly. On home ice, again. At the hands of a beatable opponent, again. Near the back end of another winnable series, again. In the first round, again. Out early again in a rare postseason in which the Western Conference path to the Stanley Cup Final is paved with gold bricks.
This undoubtedly was the worst Wild playoff letdown, at least since the last five. Nothing changes here but the opponents and unfulfilled marketing campaigns.
Grit First. Quit Second. Advance Someday.
After vanquishing their former hometown in the opening round in 2016, the Dallas Stars were Minnesota’s tormentors again, their soul-stomping 4-1 victory at Xcel Energy Center completing a thorough six-game takedown.
Just like the underwhelming St. Louis Blues last year. Vegas the year before that. Don’t forget Winnipeg in 2018. Or the Blues in ’17. And the dynastic Chicago Blackhawks consecutively in 2014 and ’15.
The last time the Wild won a playoff series nine years ago, Jake Oettinger was a freshman goalie for Lakeville North High School. Today, he is the latest boogeyman on a long list of netminders who have tormented Minnesota when the stakes are highest.
Jean-Sebastien Giguere. Jose Theodore. Corey Crawford. Kari Lehtonen. Jake Allen. Toss President Joe Biden in the crease and the Wild would to pucks into his chest or sail them over his head at every crucial juncture.
After Oettinger’s Game 3 ventilation, the NHL’s emerging money goalie played the rest of the series like he stole the homecoming queen from the float and squired her to Venice.
The Wild exhausted their emotional capital during a dominant first five minutes, which fizzled when Ryan Hartman had the puck on his stick and a yawning net in front of him only to club it to death like a snake and shovel a shot off the far post.
Moments later, they were trailing 1-0 after Roope Hintz daggered their momentum with a short-side snipe on Dallas’ first shot of the night.
Falling behind at home in another elimination game was no way to treat a weekend crowd this liquored. They had two more intermissions to guzzle $18 cocktails and brood about tossing more income into the West Seventh money pit.
Find a sword and the Wild are adept at plunging on it.
“Sick to my stomach about it,” said Hartman. “This city deserves better than what we gave them. The fans, they’ve shown up for us all year and we failed them. And it feels like shit.
“There’s opportunities throughout this series where we could have not necessarily put the nail in the coffin, but we could have separated ourselves a little bit more and we failed to capitalize on opportunities.”
This series disintegrated for Minnesota in Game 4 when they squandered a two- games-to-one lead with an undisciplined meltdown that exposed their penalty killing unit as frauds.
Yeah, there were some shady calls on Marcus Foligno et al, but the Stars scored nine power play goals in six games. When did it become illegal to overcome a bad break and kill off a penalty?
Meanwhile, the Wild were 0-for-2 on their power plays and finished the series a paltry 4-for-22. Almost a carbon copy of last year’s faceplant against the Blues.
"Our special teams again let us down; have to dive into that again," lamented coach Dean Evason.
Minnesota’s perennial inability to finish their scoring chances was on full display besides Hartman’s near-miss.
With final seconds swirling down the drain of an awful second period, Mats Zuccarello airmailed a wide-open look to Iowa. The puck naturally found its way to a streaking Mason Marchment, who, naturally, buried his chance with 0.5 seconds remaining on the clock to make it 3-0.
After a breakout 2022 postseason, Kirill Kaprizov was a ghost. Matt Boldy was an afterthought. Marcus Johansson is missing on the back of a milk carton.
The Wild’s inability to get out of their own way or respond to adversity has become their April identity. And it is high time Evason spend time on the griddle after being outcoached for the third straight postseason.
Lineup decisions, combinations and special teams are all about coaching in the Stanley Cup playoffs. It takes gut instinct, strategic thinking during and between games and winning the gamesmanship battle – not whining about it.
Craig Berube outfoxed Evason in St. Louis last year and Stars bench boss Peter DeBoer set up shop in Evason’s head for the second time in three years after leading Vegas past Minnesota in 2021.
Benching Filip Gustavsson in Game 2 in favor of Marc-Andre Fleury after his 51- save heroics in a double-overtime Game 1 win smacked of arrogance. We’ll never know if Gustavsson would have won, but he deserved the opportunity from Evason.
So much for that road split to start the series, eh?
Evason is 8-15 in four postseasons with the Wild. He was 1-12 with the Milwaukee Admirals of the American Hockey League.
How many professional hockey coaches with a .250 postseason winning percentage get a fifth bite at the playoff apple?
Firing Evason would be a convenient move for general manger Bill Guerin, who inherited him. But there is way more dry rot that has kept the Wild mired in playoff purgatory for 20 years.
Raise a glass to another summer of reckoning.
That Stanley Cup parade remains on ice.
