Minnesota Wild: Five goals across first two periods versus Vancouver
The Minnesota Wild are four goals ahead, leading the Vancouver Canucks 5-1 at the end of the second period.
Goal scoring is coming from all quarters for the Minnesota Wild with no single player netting more than one goal; Charlie Coyle, Nino Niederreiter, Mikko Koivu and Eric Staal have all chipped in with one apiece.
After calling out the power-play’s performance against the Washington Capitals, they’ve gone out and netted on both of their two extra-man opportunities. Perhaps more intriguing is that Minnesota Wild head coach slotted Jordan Greenway in on at least one of those occasions, a move I thought would help get the power-play scoring going.
Even better to see is that the assists aren’t coming from the same few players; they’re spread right across the team with fourth liners, J.T. Brown and Eric Fehr chipping in along with all the usual suspects.
Captain, Mikko Koivu is once again leading by example, following up his efforts against the Capitals with another multi-point showing. With a goal and two assists already to his name, a five-point night may not even be out of the question.
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Now, it’s fair look at the Vancouver Canucks and realise they are in a bad way; tired from a long road stint and suffering from a spate of injuries. They’re playing a goaltender that made a grand total of five appearances last season in Richard Bachman.
Safe to say, the Minnesota Wild will hope to continue racking up the goals in this encounter, whilst Vancouver will be looking forward to getting out of St. Paul and back home.
Whether it’s a good or bad thing, they’re scoring despite having the lower shot count of the two teams – does this reflect accurate shooting or Devan Dubnyk being Devan Dubnyk, yet again?
Will the Wild ease off come the third period or will what is already a rout turn into an absolute shelling?
Minnesota power-play still needs to be better. dark. Next
With one period left to play, there’s still questions to be answered but right now, I can’t see any way that the Canucks can get back into this one.