EDMONTON, Alberta – After a break Thursday, the Wild will have a few days left to prepare for its qualifying-round matchup with Vancouver, and its lone exhibition primer Wednesday offered up some practice material.
Despite a fast start by the power play, the unit came up empty-handed the rest of the game — finishing 1-for-8 in a 3-2 loss to the Avalanche at Rogers Place.
"More pucks have to go at the net," coach Dean Evason said afterward on a video call. "We thought our entries were real good. We thought our puck control was real good. But we have to find opportunities to get pucks at the net."
The power play tied the score 1-1 only 3 minutes, 5 seconds into the first period on a Matt Dumba one-timer, this after Colorado's Joonas Donskoi opened the scoring at 1:25 when he buried a rebound by Alex Stalock.
A shot off the rush by Nathan MacKinnon reinstated the Avalanche's lead by 4:47, but the period ended 2-2 after Eric Staal capitalized on a loose puck at the side of the net at 14:06.
Gabe Landeskog put Colorado ahead again at 4:31 of the second with his team's only power-play goal in five tries, and that was the difference-maker even though the Wild had four more chances with the man advantage — including a four-minute look after Marcus Foligno was caught with a high stick.
"When you've got a guy on the one unit like Zach Parise, the puck needs to get there," Evason said. "The puck needs to get there so he has an opportunity to score goals, and we didn't do enough of that for whatever reason. We'll obviously have a good opportunity to watch it and go forward with that, but definitely more pucks at the net will help us out."
Stalock was in net for all three Avalanche goals, leaving near the midway point of the second after making 14 saves. Devan Dubnyk turned aside all 12 shots he faced in relief. Both remain under evaluation to determine the team's Game 1 starter for Sunday.
