Dean Evason's message to Dallas: 'We don't dive'
Fans on both sides could easily argue that there has been some below-the-belt play through two games of the best-of-seven playoff series between the Minnesota Wild and Dallas Stars, though there only appears to be one team trying to bend the rules to earn extra power plays.
Evason's comment came after being asked about Dallas coach Pete DeBoer saying he's "not surprised" that Minnesota has taken 16 penalties in two games. DeBoer isn't wrong. The Wild were the sixth-most penalized team in the NHL this season.
"We watch all the press conferences, too," said Evason, with a smile on his face, then suggesting that Dallas has taken dives in an attempt to draw penalties. Taking dives, for the record, goes down as an embellishment penalty if the refs see it as such.
“We felt that they had some bigger people probably go down pretty easy in that hockey game,” Evason said after Game 2. “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.”
Embellishment or not, the Wild need to be better on the penalty kill. They have allowed five power-play goals on 11 penalty kills this series.
Evason also implied that he wants penalties called on the Stars for cheap shots, namely the cross checks that Ryan Suter has delivered to Kirill Kaprizov's back.
‘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 (against Winnipeg on March 8) because of it. We don’t do that. That’s not what we do."
The play that Dallas can point to as borderline dirty was Matt Dumba's hit that knocked Joe Pavelski out of Game 1. Dumba was assessed a minor roughing penalty while Pavelski didn't return to Game 1, missed Game 2 and didn't travel with the Stars to St. Paul for Games 3 and 4.
Game 3 is scheduled to begin at 8:50 p.m. CT Friday.
Title: Bring Me The Sports co-owner, editor Email: joe@bringmethenews.com Twitter: @JoeBMTN Education: Southwest Minnesota State University Location: Minneapolis, Minnesota Expertise: All things Minnesota sports Nelson has covered Minnesota sports for two decades, starting his media career in sports radio. He worked at small market Minnesota stations in Marshall and St. Cloud before joining one of the nation's highest-rated sports stations, KFAN-FM 100.3 in the Twin Cities. There, he was the producer of the top-rated mid-morning sports show with Minnesota Vikings announcer Paul Allen. His radio experience helped blossom a career as a sports writer, joining Minneapolis-based Bring Me The News in 2011. Nelson and Adam Uren became co-owners of Bring Me The News in 2018 and have since more than tripled the site's traffic and launched Bring Me The Sports in cooperation with the Sports Illustrated/FanNation umbrella. Nelson has covered the Super Bowl and numerous training camps, NFL combines, the MLB All-Star Game and Minnesota playoff games, in addition to the day-to-day happenings on and off the field of play. Nelson also has extensive knowledge of non-sports subjects, including news and weather. He works closely with Bring Me The News meteorologist Sven Sundgaard to produce a bevy of weather and climate information for Minnesota readers. Nelson helped launch and manage the Bring Me The News Radio Network, which provided more than 50 radio stations around Minnesota with daily news, sports and weather reports from 2011-17.