Young Wild players rely on playoff experience

ST. LOUIS – Nino Niederreiter, the Game 7 overtime hero when the Wild ousted Colorado in the first round of last year's NHL playoffs, remembers how anxious he was before Game 1 of that series.

"So many nerves," Niederreiter recalled Friday. "I really had no idea what to expect. I always watched it only on TV and when you see how much more intense the playoffs are and how much faster things happen in the playoffs, it's pretty scary when you've never experienced it."

But Niederreiter noticed one important thing as he sat in his stall Thursday night before the opener against the St. Louis Blues.

"I was way calmer," he said. "It was a whole different feeling than it was last year. Just to know what to expect now made me a lot more comfortable."

Many of the Wild's other younger players all felt the same way. They're not playoff newbies anymore, and they all played key parts in the Wild's Game 1 victory.

And because of that playoff experience, they all vow not to get too high simply because the Wild is leading its first playoff series in coach Mike Yeo's tenure (it never led the series against Colorado until winning Game 7).

"[Saturday's] a very important game for us," Niederreiter said. "We know they're going to come out even harder and that's exactly what we've got to do, too. We played some good hockey [Thursday], but I think we can still crank it up another level."

Charlie Coyle concurred, saying: "They're definitely not happy with their game. They obviously have more and we feel we have more, too. You can never be complacent. We won. Put it behind us and stay levelheaded here."

Big chance Saturday

Coyle and Niederreiter were physical. They created scoring chances with linemate Thomas Vanek and drew the penalty that led to rookie Matt Dumba's first career playoff goal. Jason Zucker used his speed to score the game's first goal and Mikael Granlund scored a game-winning, empty-net goal and was part of a line with veterans Zach Parise and Jason Pominville that created many scoring chances in the second and third periods.

Parise said the Wild will try to take a 2-0 stranglehold on the series because one loss can erase the momentum.

"We'd love to get out of here with a couple of wins," he said. "We did the first part of that and now we have to find areas to improve for the second game."

Yeo and Blues coach Ken Hitchcock each said Friday that they don't plan any lineup changes for Saturday's rematch. Hitchcock juggled lines, reuniting David Backes and T.J. Oshie and moving Patrik Berglund to the Jaden Schwartz-Paul Stastny line.

Hitchcock said, "[The Wild] make you earn your stripes. So, it's our job to earn our stripes. … Every aspect of our game needs to be amped up a little bit if we expect to beat this team here.

"They outchecked us. Their determination to defend was greater than ours was. Both offensively and defensively they had more minutes where they made it hard on us. Their checking and compete on the puck was at a higher level throughout the lineup than ours was."

Seeking to rebound

Yeo expects the Blues will try to establish a physical brand of hockey from the start Saturday. The Blues wanted to do that Thursday, but Zucker's early goal stunned them and deflated the building. In the second, the Wild looked like the faster team and spent the majority of the period in the offensive zone.

"We knew they were fast, they showed it, they proved it, now we adjust to it," Blues defenseman Kevin Shattenkirk said. "They can be a frustrating team at times because they're so patient in the neutral zone and their defensive zone. They're not really letting us into the middle and that can cause you to try to make plays that aren't there or force things.

"You can't forget they played last year, too, and they had a pretty good playoff run. They showed a little more experience than maybe we knew they were going to have. They're a great team. They're deep like us, they play a very good team game, they have a goalie in net who's pretty confident and playing great hockey right now."

Unlike the Niederreiters, Coyles and Granlunds, that goalie, Devan Dubnyk, was making his playoff debut.

"It's real nice to get that first one and get it out of the way," he said. "Now we can stop talking about it."