Postgame: After slow start, Wild falls short in season-ending loss to Dallas

A bad omen occurred 40 minutes before the opening faceoff when Wild players requested to come out for pregame warmups to Prince's 1999. It was a nice tribute to the late Minnesota music icon, but perhaps the Wild youngins didn't realize the Stars won the Stanley Cup in 1999.

The Wild maybe should have picked another Prince tune because the Stars partied like it was 1999 at the end of a three-goal first period.

The second bad omen was the fact the Wild, for one game, decided to change its goal song from its normal "Crowd Chant" by Joe Satriani to the Prince song, "Let's Go Crazy."

Unfortunately for the fans, it would be 4-0 Dallas by the time they heard it, but then the Wild certainly went crazy.

A clunker of a hockey game turned into one of the most entertaining third periods of the season, which fittingly, ended with the Wild coming up short in disappointing fashion.

After spotting the Dallas Stars a 4-0 lead, the Wild rallied on two goals by Jared Spurgeon and one by Jonas Brodin to pull within a goal with 11:21 to play.

The Wild had a chance to tie the score with Kari Lehtonen put a puck onto Jason Zucker's stick near the goalmouth and the net open, but Zucker couldn't convert.

That was a massive miss because seconds later after the ensuing faceoff, the Stars took a 5-3 lead when Alex Goligoski's shot hit Charlie Coyle and floated into the air and fell into the crease. Devan Dubnyk had no clue where the puck went. He said with the velocity of the shot, he thought the puck had to go in the corner.

It didn't. He heard yelling, scrambled and kicked the puck into the net with his skates.

Yes, the nightly fluky goal against Dubnyk. That would become the winner because Jason Pominville scored with 4:47 left. With 33.9 seconds left, Nino Niederreiter came a hair (almost literally) from scoring when he crashed the net. It's crazy how close the puck went to going in. It's a shame that NBC only showed a still frame (and not the moving frames from the crossbar cam) of the puck resting on the bottom of Kari Lehtonen's right pad because now there are conspiracies that the puck actually went in. There's also a screen capture going around that is flawed if you watch the YouTube video I'll attach below of the Parallax view. It's actually nearly identical, and with the puck in the air and the angle from the back, you're going to see white. The frame is not proof the puck was completely over the goal line.

Anyway, it was ruled no goal. Also looks like Jason Demers covered the puck with his hand in the crease, which if true, should have been a penalty shot (not reviewable, the ref has to call it).

Regardless, after giving up three first-period goals, falling behind 4-0 and having eight shots through 33 minutes, the Wild finally exuded a modicum of fight in the third and just fell short.

Please go to startribune.com/wild for my game story, my notebook on what Devan Dubnyk thinks of all the fluky goals that went in against him down the stretch and in this series, a hand injury Dubnyk had been playing with, a note on Zucker's disappointing season and some other stuff.

There will also be Jim Souhan's column and a story by Rachel Blount on John Torchetti and how he hopes this was not his final game as Wild coach.

In the coming days, the Wild will have its end-of-the-year availability and Chuck Fletcher's year-end presser where he'll have to answer some questions on what in my opinion was a disappointing season and how to keep this season from happening again.

He has traded for goalies to fix the midseason meltdowns, this year had to fire a coach. It's safe to say next season he won't be able to do either if he needs to repair the season.

He needs to diagnose the issues on this team and remedy them.

He needs to figure out who will coach this team, if he'll buy out a player like Thomas Vanek, whether he'll need to trade some of his young players to get some much-needed scoring in here.

It'll be a busy offseason for a team that's up against the salary cap and has only four draft picks (two in the seventh round)

I will have an analysis in Tuesday's paper looking ahead, so please see that paper.

I'll attach a bunch of quotes from the postgame availability now (thanks to those in the quote loop), but I hope you enjoyed the Star Tribune's coverage this season. I appreciate you all reading and writing and tweeting. I appreciate the ridiculous support I get from many of you, too. It's humbling.

For now, I'll be on Rosen's Sports Sunday tonight at 10:30 and I'll be on KFAN at 9 a.m. Tuesday.

Torchetti

This game: It was testing. It wasn't the start we wanted, but we got back into it. To me the fourth goal was the one we couldn't get over. But we made a hell of a push back. They didn't want to give up, and we talked about it in between periods, and just saying, 'Let's stick to our plan here.' We've scored some goals before. Hats off to Dallas; Lindy Ruff and his staff, congrats. They did a great job. A great series. We wish we were going to Dallas, but we're not.

Odd bounces: I'd rather be lucky than good, because that happens a lot. You have to get the puck to, and that's the bottom line. They're a great shot-attempt team, and they're committed to that. That's something moving forward for our team, we need way more commitment to that, and that net-front presence we've been talking about for however long I've been here. That's the difference. Then try to get that goal 6-on-5. Pretty close there. I loved the push. I thought we had it when [Zucker] had it there to make it 4-4. Good group there; they worked hard. I told them the coaching staff was proud of them. We can't be happy walking away; that's for sure. We should be playing, and it makes it tough for the summer; that's for sure.

Zucker impression moving forward: I don't know what happened prior to when I got here, it's just a tough situation when you're doing a contract; all that stuff. I just worry about how you play the game. I work for the logo, and that's the bottom line. He has to have a way better year next year, and that's the bottom line.

Coaching a team going cold to hot so easily: That's where the consistency comes in. We have to find a way (to be consistent). If [Zucker] is playing halfway to his game, which, I love his accountability. That's what it's all about for me. And I'll say it: I love it that he spoke about like that. That just shows you how much character the kid has. We know he'll bounce back for us next year; that's the number one thing. He's still a great player, you just have to learn when you're not scoring, you have to do the other details of the game. Faceoffs, blocked shots, hard on the walls, compete hard; those are the intangibles. For us in this series here, it's faceoffs, and we have to get that 6-on-5 and execute, and we got good looks. That thing was sitting, what, half an inch off the guys pad? The difference in the game, and we've got a tie game.

Coyle future as center: Sure, you want that big size. Benn and Sharpy were really big for them, and so was Hemsky, but Spezza played really well. He's a big guy, so you need a big body up against him rubbing him so he doesn't feel comfortable. I don't think he was too worried about certain coverages. We have to get someone heavy on him, and get on him so he feels uncomfortable down low.

Message on bench from him and Mikko after two quick goals: Mikko was just leading. One of the funny stories inside the game was I think there was 4:20 left, and I said, 'Mikko, let's pull the goalie. Do you want to pull around 4?' And he goes, 'Oh, no, no, no, no, we're going to score. Relax.' I said, 'OK, thanks.' That's what it's all about. You leave it to the players, and that's what your captain does. You talk to him, and we scored, and he's kind of looking at me, and I'm like, 'OK, you're right.' But that's what it's all about, and that's what leaders do. We had a couple of good looks there, and we had a chance, right? If I told everyone we were going to be down 4-0, and we get a chance to tie the game with 1:24, 6-on-5, everyone was probably ready to go out the building. Our fans, I'm sorry we didn't get the win but they revved it up, I'll tell you. In that third period I couldn't even talk on the bench.

Slow start: We can't put a team 5-on-3 like that. We said penalties, and that was the one (goal). But then the second play was the faceoff play, and that's the bottom line. The third one, we have to know, 2-on-1, it's Sharpy, and Sharpy's a shooter. We have to take it away from him. And if he beats us with a pass, let him beat us that way. We had a tracker with a D to kind of make it 2-on-2, and you have to know who you're out there with, and he's the shooter, so take away the pass, and get in the shooting lane, and maybe press a little bit.

Assess his job: That's for them to decide. I like the team, the parts of it. Number one, I just want to work on being consistent. That's the number one thing for me. We got some players back playing. That's up for them to decide. I just know that coming into this building is a lot of fun working here, and there are some good players here, good young players that are going to be great players as we keep going along.

Could this be full-time gig: The only reason I even came up was because Chuck and Flahrsie, and Mr. Leipold asked me. I never wanted to do that again because — I was 1-for-2. I got offered the Florida job, and I didn't take it, and then LA, I had to wait. We'll see. I'm not really worried about that; we just lost a playoff game.

Spurgeon surprise him: No. Not at all. He's a great player. He loves it. He thrives on it. That's the players you like to coach. You want to be on the ice in any situation during the game. That's who you like to coach. And don't get rattled. He was pretty calm, and [Suter] did a great job. [Suter] did a great job with him moving the puck, getting pucks through. The power play was good there. It would have been nice to get one earlier, but it still got us a big goal to even it up, the one 5-on-3. Those two played well together, and they were good down the stretch here. But [Spurgeon], it says it all down there down on the left wall there with about three minutes left when he's about to knock down Roussel there. That tells you all about his game right there.

Need more from Dumba and Scandella: Yeah; we have to. We didn't win. We need more from everybody. We need more from myself as a coach. I have to do a better job. We didn't win. That's the bottom line.

Mental makeup of team: Mental toughness is part of your game of building the consistency in your team. When you're being pushed, you have to want to be pushed, and you have to want to do it for each other. That's the thing that I've seen in this team, they push for each other, and they held each other accountable. They just have to keep getting better at it. That's the playoffs. WE lost in the Western Conference Final with Chicago. We had three turnovers in the overtime, and we learned from that. I don't know about the past. I'm just talking about since I've been here, and those are things that we have to get mentally tough with, and build that consistency in our game. A lot of guys made strides that way.

LINDY RUFF

You have to win a series, and we found a way to win it. I thought the Wild played one heck of a series. There wasn't any quit in them. They came hard with five guys when they were down, they got a little life in this building and they made it tough. As tough as we were coming back on them the other night they showed it coming back tonight.

Spurgeon

We weren't happy with the first two, and we just talked about it in here: Giving it all we had, and you never know what can happen. We came that close, one weird bounc of the skate that pops up and ends up in the back of our net, and one that just doesn't fully cross the line from being a tie game.

I'm not happy with the start obviously, but the way the guys battled in here, it's huge of us. We could have just sat back and let it be a 4-0 game, but we clawed our way back. We can take some positives out of that, but it would have been great to equalize there.

We weren't happy with the way we were playing, and you have to give credit to them; they were playing a good game too. We needed to find a way to get going in the second period, and they held us at will there, and our power play didn't get it done in the second. But in the third, we battled our way back, and we made it a game.

Just the pride we have in this room. No one wants to go out the way we were playing in the first two periods there. You could see everyone in the third period was laying it all on the line. I don't think anyone has anything in the tank right now from what we played in the third there. It [stinks] that it came up short.

DEVAN DUBNYK

It's tough to sit on a bounce like that when we're mounting the effort we were in the third period. It doesn't feel right to lose the game on a goal like that. but that's the way it is.

A lot of those? It seemed like at least one every game. I guess that's why you throw pucks to the net. But that was a tough time to get a bounce like that. The way the guys worked in the third period, I'm just proud to be back there and a part of that. Right to the end, we still managed to get within one and almost score there. That makes you feel sick to have to lose a game and a series on a bouncer like that.

Torch? It was great. You look at the direction we were heading. Things weren't looking good. He brought a lot of energy when he came in here. Obviously the first goal was to get back in that race and make the playoffs and we were able to do that. This series certainly could've gone either way. He brought a lot of energy for us and we responded.

(First question joined in progress) " … disappointing in that regard but to show that battle, like we did, it's a tough consolation but it is a consolation."

(Did you think that puck was in?) "We thought it was. I thought Demers actually put it in. They reviewed it and obviously it wasn't. Man, I thought we were going to tie that up and take it to overtime."

(Crazy third period?) "Yeah, that's what the guys were saying. They said they've never seen anything like it. When you're in the middle of it, you're not even thinking about it, you're just trying to get that next one and just build off the crowd. It's just too bad we couldn't get that last one."

(Was this like your season?) "Yeah, a lot of ups and downs for sure throughout the season and then through the playoffs here. It's just too bad we couldn't get that last one."

(The way you pulled it out on Friday how do you explain this start?) "They got a 5-on-3 early. That's tough to … when they scored on that that was tough. But … yeah, I don't know. Good question. It wasn't a good start but we were right there at the end. … It's no consolation but we hung in there and we didn't quit."

(How would you assess Torchett's impact?) "I thought we had a good team. We were in a little slump there in the middle of the year. I said it when it happened, it was too bad to see Yeosie go because he was a good coach, he is a good coach, and they had to do something and unfortunately that's what they did. Our team was the same team before and after that so just too bad something like that had to happen."

(How do you characterize the season?) "I think it's too early to … I feel like we should still be playing. The way that third period ended I thought, 'Man, just one more minute in that period and maybe we're going to keep going.' The next couple of days I'll definitely think about that but not right now."

(Hard to take that end with so close?) "Harder? I don't know. A loss is a loss. It's disappointing, it's disappointing that it had to come to that to go down four goals and at the start of the period, we believed in here that we weren't going to quit, but to score four goals in third period, if you can do that usually you're going to win the game."

CHARLIE COYLE

CHARLIE COYLE

Third period?
We went down to the wire and had nothing to lose. We came out battling. It's a shame we didn't come out like that. Tough first couple goals put us behind. But for us to battle back like that, it was a good feeling. It was right there and we felt it. It comes down to inches there and we just couldn't get it.

Emblematic of whole season?
It was a pretty crazy year. There were times where we got away from stuff, but we didn't stop. We're a team in here and we battled. It shows the character of the team. We never give up just like in that game. It sucks that it came down to inches on that last goal, but we kept battling.

Torch?
It's a tough position to come in like that that early in the year with the position we were in. But we made playoffs, got where we wanted and just fell a little short.

He a good fit?
I think so. He did a good job. That was a tough position to come in like that. For us to make playoffs with the position we were in losing game after game and it wasn't looking good. He helped turn things around.

NINO NIEDERREITER

That video>>>