Blues stun Wild to take opener 4-0

Josh Kivela crossed the plate on a sacrifice fly for Hibbing’s only run in last week’s 3-1 loss to Denfeld at Wade Stadium.

Everything was in perfect place for the Minnesota Wild to open the NHL Stanley Cup Playoffs against the St. Louis Blues at home with games Monday and Wednesday.

All the injured players were back in uniform, the team was on a season-ending roll, a huge crowd was assured, and who could stop the explosive 1-2 punch of Krill Kaprizov and Kevin Fiala?

Well, the St. Louis Blues, that’s who. Game 3 will have started and ended before this was written, so I don’t know how it came out, but the Wild were in a desperate situation, needing to bounce back from a devastating 4-0 Game 1 loss to the Blues, just to break even in the first two games, before heading for St. Louis and Games 3 and 4.

The Wild had an impressive total of seven players who had scored 20 goals or more, but the Blues had the unheard of asset of having all nine forwards on their top three lines with 20 or more goals. They may be the only NHL team that can match the Wild’s balance in depth.

No matter what the result of Game 2 was, the after-effects of Game 1 could torment Wild fans all summer.

A good friend of mine and I discussed Wild plans before Game 1, before coach Dean Evason decided between goaltenders Cam Talbot and Marc-Andre Fleury.

I praised Evason for a season of logical decisions, and said I was sure he’d go with Talbot, who had won his last three regular-season games to go 14-0-3 down the stretch, over Fleury, a former Cup winner brought in by trade to support Talbot.

Evason chose to start Fleury, to which Bally TV analyst Wes Walz said with a smirk that Evason couldn’t have made a mistake because both had been playing well, “so he chose to go with the Hall of Fame. You can’t blame him for that.”

I blamed him, because Fleury had been good, but erratic, while Talbot had simply been outstanding and practically invincible.

Fleury didn’t cost the Wild Game 1, and he stopped a penalty shot, but the Blues scored twice on the power play and once just a couple seconds after a power play expired.

On three of those goals, Fleury made a save but couldn’t control the rebound. That doesn’t load the blame on him, but Talbot is very good at rebound control.

The bigger issue in Game 1 for the Wild was the apparent league plan to call penalties tighter on any hassles that might arise. There were at least four occasions when Blues players initiated hassles with cheap hits in traffic, and when those hassles ensued, the refs called Wild players for the only penalty.

Similarly, when a Blues player was called for the lone penalty, a Wild player was called later in the hassle to even things up.

The Blues power play is a slick operation, so slick it made the Wild power play look like it had never practiced.

One play in particular bothered me, when defenseman Jonas Brodin chased Ivan Barbashev going in on a breakaway.

Just as Barbarashev was about to shoot, Brodin delicately reached around on the left and lifted his stick, fouling up the shot attempt. It was perhaps the best and cleanest play I’ve ever seen to stop a breakaway without a penalty.

But they called a penalty shot, and explained that Brodin had “impeded the progress” of the shooter.
Yes, causing a player to overstate the puck can definitely impede his progress, but a former defenseman I know well told me it was the most perfect defense against a breakaway he had ever seen.

That didn’t beat the Wild, either, but it contributed to the demoralizing routine being played out, where David Perron scored on the first two Blues power plays in the first period, and completed his hat trick later.

The Wild fired shots from every angle, with an almost frantic effort. Many were blocked. The Wild, meanwhile, blocked only four shots all night, none in the first period, so the Blues somehow found channels to shoot through that were unnoticed by the Wild.

The Blues did a remarkable defensive job preventing Kaprizov and Fiala from ever being factors in the game, and scheming to deflect or intercept any passing plays attempted by the Wild.

One game does not a series make, but this will be the ultimate test for the Wild’s resilience.
We can all remember back to when the Wild won Game 1 – Winnipeg? – and then got blown out. It can happen, and the Wild’s enthusiastic and perhaps over-confident fan base deserves it.

Randolph honored

In the space of one calendar year, Mike Randolph went from being rudely and unceremoniously deposed as hockey coach at Duluth East when a naive and unfeeling administration said it would not renew his contract, causing him to resign, and this week, when Randolph emerged as the new head coach at St. Thomas Academy.

The move was expected to be announced before the weekend, but the opportunity for perhaps the state’s best high school hockey coach to land on his feet at one of the most prestigious high schools in the state is a win-win for both Randolph and St. Thomas Academy.

Randolph spent the past season coaching the Cadets junior varsity team to an impressive upsurge as the season progressed, including a weekend trip with the varsity when STA beat both Grand Rapids and Hermantown back-to-back.

He also helped out with the varsity as associate head coach with Trent Eigner. When the school decided to not renew Eigner’s contract, the job was opened and attracted an impressive list of candidates.

But Randolph’s acceptance by an appreciative group of players, parents and school administrators undoubtedly led to him getting the job.

Bizarre plays

The Minnesota Timberwolves may have expanded their fan base with a spirited series against the Memphis Grizzlies, before falling in six games.

That wrenching defeat was written when the Grizzlies came from double-digit deficits in their last three victories, whereas no NBA team had ever done it more than once.

The most memorable play of the fifth game was when Memphis had the ball out of bounds with 3 seconds left. A perfect pass in was grabbed by Ja Morant, who scored the last 13 Memphis points, and who drove around two large Timberwolves, changed hands while flying out of bounds, and banked in his left-handed layup with one second left for a 111-109 victory.

So I’m flipping channels Monday night, and here is Memphis in the final stages of a thriller against the Golden State Warriors.

They have a guard named Stephen Curry, who is exactly the kind of player whose brilliance on offense and defense can win games. Curry scored 24 in that game, and the Warriors led 117-116 and Memphis had a throw in with 3.6 seconds left.

It was deja vu, for sure. A pass in, then a feed to a streaking Morant, who hurtled toward the basket, beating two Warriors on the way.

Sure enough, he switched hands, and sure enough he feathered a bank shot off the glass, but this time it didn’t work. The ball hit the rim and bounced out, as the clock his 0:00, and the Grizzlies lost 117-116.

Morant finished with 34 points and 10 assists with all manner of passes, but he sat on the floor after the game and simply said, “I missed the layup.”

He is, without a doubt, the quickest and most colorfully skilled player I’ve seen in a lot of years, and it seems somehow less painful to see him do his gymnastics-quality routine against somebody other than the Timberwolves.

As spectacular plays go, the Twins already have pulled off an incredible victory against the Detroit Tigers last week. 

The Twins were behind 4-3 and things looked bleak in the last of the ninth, when Tigers closer Greg Soto walked Trevor Larch and Gio Urshela to open the inning.

Soto struck out Max Kepler, who had homered and driven in three runs earlier. Miguel Sano blasted a line drive to deep right field. Ex-Twin Robbie Grossman ran back, reached up, and the ball tipped the end of the fingers on his glove.

No question, Grossman should have caught the missile, but it glanced off and hit the wall in right.
Thinking the ball would be caught, both runners tagged up and the throw home kept both runners from scoring.

But Sano, assuming he might get a double, kept running around first and steamed into second. That forced Urshela to break for third, where Larch was still in residence.

Catcher Eric Haase, by now a third of the way up the third baseline, had a cinch game-winning play in his hand as he moved toward third.

The best move was to throw the ball to third baseman Jeimer Candelario, who could tag as many Twins as necessary to end the game.

But Haase lobbed his throw, and the unexpected changeup sailed several feet over Candelario’s leaping attempt to catch it. The ball trickled into left field, and both Larch and Urshela scored one stride apart for a walk-off – error, and a 5-4 victory.

Of such fluke-play successes are pennants won.