Everything Else

We Like To Watch – May 3rd And Farewell To Hockeenight

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Well, that kicked up a notch, didn’t it?

After Brooks Orpik’s pretty gross hit on Olli Maatta in Game 2 you figured that there would be some kind of retribution. You would have gotten pretty short odds on it being known-hothead and lunatic Kris Letang taking a late run at Marcus Johansson, because that made sense. Once again the refs made things worse when they thought they were making things better by keeping Letang in the game. When you don’t eject someone for a hit that late and that malicious, you’re basically asking the other team to take runs at him all night which is just going to escalate the silliness into something no one wants. And that’s what they got. Maybe one day the NHL will hire refs with balls, but I’m fairly sure I’ll be nothing but dust in the wind by the time they do.

Everything Else

Somebody To Shove: Wild 1 – Hawks 4 (Hawks Lead 2-0)

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Box Score

Event Summary

Extra Skater

I doubt you’ll see a more h0-hum game in the second round of the playoffs than this afternoon’s. It’s clear that the Wild haven’t completely caught the attention of the Hawks’ faithful yet, and they haven’t caused the Hawks to think that they have to pull out the full arsenal. At least not yet. And the Hawks still lead this series 2-0 heading back to St. Paul.

The Hawks exerted a lot of control in the 1st period, without using it to strangle the Wild. They held them to two shots while only managed seven themselves, though they the attempts were 12-4. While the 2nd shows the Wild got 13 shots, half of those were piled in during a power play and almost all of them came on one goalmouth scramble. The 2nd wasn’t really any looser than the 1st, and came capped off with a Brandon Saad laster into the top corner right after a power play after the Wild didn’t fully deal with a cross-ice pass from Bickell.

While the Hawks weren’t as aggressive in the 3rd, it didn’t feel like they were completely turtling. The Wild got one goal off a really well-worked rush from Erik Haula and Cody McCormick (what?) but after that the Hawks soaked up whatever pressure there was and waited for a chance to seal it. They got two. Hossa hit the crossbar. Bickell didn’t. After the Wild goal they only managed six more shot attempts and it was pretty easily seen out.

Shall we? We shall.