Postgame: Wild discovers its game after being overwhelmed early

I wrote a ton about Devan Dubnyk and Zach Parise in the game story, so I’ll try to touch on some other stuff from tonight’s come-from-behind 2-1 shootout win over the Islanders.

On an aside, funny story, but I met a person the other day that said, “I love your blogs.” I laughed and said, “How about the articles?” He goes, “What articles?” Yes, I write those, too. That's what I'm doing when I disappear on Twitter every third period.

I just thought that was funny, and on a night like tonight where I spent the majority of the gamer talking about Dubnyk, I don’t want you to think I’m completely out to lunch if I don’t touch on him as much in here. Start reading the articles, too, if you don’t (ha). I try to make this more of a supplement.

Obviously, Dubnyk continues to be the Wild’s MVP and lifted the Wild to yet another gigantic win tonight. The Kings just keep winning, so the Wild stayed five points up on a playoff spot with eight games left. Winnipeg blew a 2-0 lead in Vancouver and lost 5-2.

That means the Wild is three up on the first wildcard spot.

I knew the Wild had a travel delay out of Toronto last night, but I didn’t realize until after the game that the Wild got to its hotel at 3 a.m. I think the Wild kept that to itself in order to make sure that the Wild’s potential fatigue wasn’t part of Jack Capuano’s gameplan. Didn’t matter. The Islanders always come out hard and home and they had the Wild firmly planted on its heels in a first period in which the Wild was outshot 16-5 and out-attempted 32-9.

“First period, we were turning pucks over like crazy, turning pucks over in front of their defensemen, making hope plays and forcing plays and allowing them to counter back with their speed,” Yeo said. “You can’t play with good structure when you’re turning pucks over like that.”

But Dubnyk, the rock star, kept the Wild in a scoreless game.

“They’re big on their starts and they try to overwhelm you and sometimes on the road like that, it’s important to just survive, just get through that first wave and gather ourselves,” Dubnyk said after his 37-save effort. “Exactly what we did.”

The Wild started to play much better in the second, started to get some chances on Jaroslav Halak, who didn’t have to exert himself early, started to come with speed. Halak made a nice save on a deflected Thomas Vanek (his eight-game point streak ended) shot and a great save on Jason Pominville off a Parise setup.

But with 23.7 seconds left in the second, the moment a penalty on Mikael Granlund expired, John Tavares jammed in the game’s first goal.

But Yeo altered his lines in the third to create some offense and the Wild responded by buzzing shift after shift for eight or nine minutes. Parise and Pominville played with Mikko Koivu, Granlund played with Nino Niederreiter and Chris Stewart and Thomas Vanek and Charlie Coyle played with Jordan Schroeder (more on him in a sec).

Finally, Pominville found Parise in front, Halak stopped Parise’s first shot and Parise scored his 29^th goal on his rebound. Parise scored 29 last season, so he’s a goal from his personal-best with the Wild. He was great again. Goal, shootout winner, four shots, four hits, four blocked shots (huge one in last minute).

The Wild got to overtime and Dubnyk was great again, especially on a robbery of Johnny Boychuk.

“I can’t even count the times that guy’s scored on me in the American League and even when he was in Boston, so I was lucky I could at least return the favor a couple times,” Dubnyk said. “It probably would take about 10 times before I could get him back on all the goals he scored on me.”

In the shootout, Dubnyk wasn’t beaten on three attempts and Parise’s 39^th career shootout goal was the difference.

“I’ve seen that before. Just never happened to me,” Parise said of his post and in goal.

10^th straight road win to extend franchise-record and 14-1-2 on the road under Dubnyk. He is now 14-1-1 on the road in 17 starts with a 1.44 goals-against average and .952 save percentage.

He is now 3-0-1 with a 1.20 GAA and a .967 SV% in the second of back-to-backs since being pulled Jan. 20 at Detroit in his first try with the Wild in such a situation.

YES, HE WILL START BOTH RARE BACK-TO-BACK GAMES THIS WEEKEND AT HOME AGAINST CALGARY AND L.A., AND WE DON’T EVEN HAVE TO ASK YEO!

“He deserves this story right now and deserves to be talked about. It’s a guy you want to cheer for,” Yeo said of Dubnyk.

The Wild now has eight wins when trailing after two periods. That’s fourth-most in the NHL.

“We shouldn’t get in the habit of it,” Ryan Suter, who logged 32:04 of ice time, said. “The past two weeks, we’ve been coming out slow and finding ways to win at the end, which is a good thing to have. But we don’t want to make a habit of it.”

Dubnyk said, “We’ve won games where we’ve absolutely dominated, we’ve won games like this. But we always find a way to gather ourselves and get our game going and get the important goals. We just find ways to do it in every way imaginable. Road wins are huge in the playoffs.”

The Wild has won once on the road in the past two playoffs, so this is big the confidence the Wild has on the road. And if the Wild makes the playoffs, it’ll start on the road barring a mathematical miracle.

Finally, Schroeder. Scratched in eight straight because of a number’s game. He played his first game since March 6 tonight because of Kyle Brodziak’s minor upper-body injury.

Schroeder’s speed was a threat all night, and after starting on the fourth line with Erik Haula and Sean Bergenheim, he was elevated to the third line, played on the Wild’s one penalty kill and played in overtime.

“He brought a lot of energy, he brought a lot of speed,” Yeo said. “I do think that part of our [problematic] start is the game was happening fast for us and he was a guy that was thinking the game and playing the game at the speed it was going out there.”

That’s pretty impressive for a guy who hadn’t played in 2 ½ weeks.

“Every time he was on the ice, he was bringing some momentum to us, he was having some good shifts and he earned more opportunity through the game,” Yeo said.

Even though I liked Bergenheim’s game much better the past two games, I’d have to think now if Brodziak can play this weekend, Schroeder would stay in and Bergenheim would come out. But we will see.

The Wild is off Wednesday. I’ll write a follow and I’m actually staying in New York for the day and will be back Thursday. Rachel Blount has Thursday’s practice and I will be doing another podcast with Jim Souhan Thursday afternoon at the Liffey in St. Paul. You can also listen at souhanunfiltered.com.