Coming into this one, the main story was always going to be how Mike Yeo adjusted the way his troops went about playing this one, and would the d-men who all made mistakes in Game 1 leading to goals would tighten up or not. Yeo did change tack, and it was the Hawks’ d-men who certainly tightened up. Sadly for Minnehaha, Ryan Suter most certainly did not.
The Wild came into this one deciding to lean heavily on what they do best, and that is gobble up space in the neutral zone and keep things to the perimeter in their zone. While it wasn’t an out-and-out trap, it certainly was more conservative than they were in Game 1. On the surface, it makes total sense. As we said in the program tonight, when judging how things were going for each goalie in these playoffs, the Wild did seem more likely to win a 2-1 game than they do a 4-3 one.
