TALKING POINTS

• Here’s the thing, for the Wild to have a chance in this series they need to slow the Jets up. They need to be physical, they need to grind the much faster Jets down. For a brief moment in time in the first they did that, but the problem is that A: physical play isn’t really what the Wild specialize in and B: The Jets have zero issue using their speed to play physical and create room.
• The Jets were not only hitting, but they were hitting to separate Wild players from pucks they were either carrying or trying to battle for. It’s one thing to hit in a hockey game, but hitting with purpose is so much better and that’s exactly what Winnipeg is doing.
• Turning point of the game was Byfuglien hit on Mikuo Koivu. Sure Koivu got up from it, but that’s a tone setter for the rest of the game. (We’ll ignore the fact that Koivu’s short handed chances before that hit were partly created by a bad Byfuglien pinch)
• Devan Dubnyk was great yet again with 39 saves. Bless his heart, this is the St. Louis series from last year all over again only worse because the Jets have more weapons now than the Blues did last year.
• Connor Hellebuyck was good. He’s not being challenged a whole lot – unless you consider his own personal battle to stay awake during the game while all the action is on the other end of the ice a challenge – but when called upon, especially a few times in the first period when it was a scoreless game, he was sharp.

SCORING SUMMARY

GIF HIGHLIGHTS

I BROUGHT CHARTS

Matchups are limited to 5-on-5 situations. Tile size is scaled by Time On Ice and colour is scaled by adjusted Expected Goals differential. Blue represents a home team advantage and red represents a road team advantage.

PLAYERS OF THE GAME

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