Dubnyk good to go, Haula returns for the Wild; Torchetti, Ruff expects more intense Game 2

There were low blows and scrums galore in the Panthers-Islanders game, sucker punches and physicality in the Lightning-Red Wings game, a game that included Henrik Zetterberg picking up Pavel Datsyuk's teeth from the ice.

We all have seen the intensity in the Blues-Blackhawks series and the Ducks-Predators, after some initial feeling out, became one heck of a battle and ultimately a Predators upset.

The other night, you didn't get the sense the Wild knew it was playing a playoff game. Nobody needs to see punches to the nether regions or bloody mouths, but how about a little intensity, physicality and effort?

That's the first things Wild coach John Torchetti noted to his team when it met this morning.

"The physicality of the game, the checking part of the game, we have to improve in that by 60 percent," Torchetti said. "We didn't do a good enough job and I've got to do a better job preparing us for tonight. Part one was today and we're going to do part two tonight before the game starts."

Stars coach Lindy Ruff certainly expects a different game tonight.

"I expect the game to be nothing like Game 1, nothing like Game 1 at all," Ruff said. "This is desperation time. In the history of going through this and losing the first game, you're the visiting team and you have one shot to win a game in the opposition building, you put Game 1 aside and I just think it's going to be a totally different game. And I expect to see their best. I expect to see them as physical as they can be and try to be as aggressive as they can be in when it comes to creating offense because the talk has been there hasn't been no offense for six, seven games. I've been in there, I've had teams similar to that, I know what I've asked the team. You throw Game 1 out and you can expect a totally different game from my front."

Devan Dubnyk pronounced himself good to go, as did Erik Haula. Tyler Seguin is a gametime decision, but he skated on the Stars' fifth line in the pregame skate and sounded like a guy who didn't think he was playing.

"I feel good, I feel like I am ready to play, but it is going to a coach's decision," Seguin said. "I am prepared and ready. … If it were up to me, I'd be playing by now, but sometimes you have to cautious."

The hope tonight from Minnesota is Haula can come in and solidify the line with Nino Niederreiter and Jason Pominville, add some speed and some offense.

"Speed, you seen a little bit of that lacking last game," Torchetti said. "More possession time with the puck, we got to make sure that they have to defend us too. We didn't do a great job of checking against them like we usually do. Getting him back in the lineup it hopefully gives us more possession time and frustrates them a little bit offensively with some of their top-end players."

Ruff knows Haula's game well.

Dubnyk brushed off yesterday's maintenance absence.

"It's that time of the year, so you want to take some breaks when you can and yesterday was one of those days," Dubnyk said. "So we'll be ready to go for tonight."

On what needs to be better tonight, Dubnyk said, "We talked about it. We need to play a little faster, careful on our turnovers and try to get some possession time on the other end. We want to stay out of the box more than we did. Our PK did a great job last game. but we don't want to be walking that line every game against these guys, so we'll be a little more disciplined that way and look to get better."

The Wild just needs to stop turning pucks over.

"We call them TWIG plays-take what is given," Torchetti said. "If they're gapped up in front of us, we want to get it behind them. If they're backed off, then we want to make our plays. We have to recognize it, it's a faster-paced game but we've played in fast games. We played against one of the top teams in the league in gap control is Chicago and we've got to get back to that style of play."

The Wild's anticipated lines are on yesterday's blog. Again, Mikael Granlund is expected to move to left wing, Charlie Coyle to center.

The Stars have been a terrific team away from the puck the last month. That was clear the other night.

"We started the year with at one point we were ninth or 10th in the league with our goals against," Ruff said. "We had a bad month, which really threw a wrench into where we really wanted to be and it took us longer than I felt it should have to get out of that little bit of funk we got into where we gave up five goals and six goals, didn't play very good road hockey. The schedule for the most part, the first three months, was ideal. We didn't have a lot of back-to-backs, our travel was good. We started playing six in nine and sometimes fatigue created some pretty sloppy games. We ended up taking a lot of penalties, but I really felt after we got through that, we got back to where we were really in the first 30 games-getting back above, skating well and making sure we were tracking back and taking away any type of rush situations. We had a big dip, we came out of that and got back to right where we wanted and how we wanted to play. We haven't changed anything. I just think the commitment has been greater this last six weeks."

I do hear Parise is progressing and has been on the treadmill and things like that, but he hasn't practiced with the team for almost two weeks.

Said Torchetti, "He's just going to be day-by-day as we go along."