Wild can't complete comeback in Chicago as Blackhawks take Game 1

CHICAGO – Mike Yeo is a realist.

Even though he talked Friday about the Wild's "quiet confidence" and how the Wild feels it is a much more mature, improved team than the one that lost to the Chicago Blackhawks in each of the past two postseasons, the coach said, "Bottom line is until we … prove that something's different, then nothing's changed."

In Game 1 of Wild-Blackhawks Part III, there was bad from the Wild (a three-goal deficit), there was good (a three-goal comeback). But ultimately, there was the familiar United Center outcome — a seventh straight road playoff loss in Chicago as the Wild wasted that rally by falling 4-3.

Afterward, Yeo said this is "an opportunity to prove that something is different — that we can get better in our game."

After a first period in which the Blackhawks cashed in on it seemed every Wild breakdown, Jason Zucker, Zach Parise and Mikael Granlund scored second-period goals to stun the Hawks. The Wild was less than a minute from getting out of the period tied until Teuvo Teravainen scored his first career playoff goal on a 56-foot fluttering shot that Devan Dubnyk couldn't glove down.

"I didn't pick it up till it was about 5 to 6 feet in front of me," Dubnyk said. "I kind of waved at it and missed it. I didn't see it come off the guy's stick.

"I didn't pick it up at all. That's my job, to get out and find a way to find the puck at all times. I didn't do that there and it cost me. It's certainly a disappointing one to give up when you work as hard as we did to come back."

It was the latest example in a game of the Blackhawks cashing in on any opening the Wild provided. Little things cost the Wild all first period, and it did here late in the second when 12 seconds before the go-ahead goal, Thomas Vanek could have simply played a puck and gotten a whistle after a hand pass from teammate Jordan Leopold.

Hovering over the puck, Vanek didn't touch it.

"I was just hoping [the ref] would blow it dead and the faceoff would be in the neutral zone and not our zone. Looking back, I should have just touched it," Vanek said.

Vanek either misunderstood the rule or thought Leopold passed the puck with his hand from the defensive zone because the faceoff would have been in the neutral zone, not defensive zone. It was costly. Niklas Hjalmarsson played it forward, the Blackhawks got it deep, and after Leopold, Charlie Coyle and Vanek couldn't get it out, the Blackhawks made it 4-3 with 58.2 seconds left in the second.

"I don't know that that was the difference in the hockey game," Yeo said. "It's easy to look at it right now. But, yeah, absolutely in hindsight, we'd like to touch that puck."

Still, in the third, the Wild had two power plays and several other Grade A chances to tie. The Wild's best chance came with two minutes left when a Blackhawks outlet hit a stanchion and ricocheted into the slot. Granlund set up Jason Pominville, but the scorer who had a tough year flubbing shots shanked one with the net partly open.

Last year, a Brent Seabrook dump-in hit a stanchion in Minnesota and ended with Patrick Kane scoring a series clincher.

It was a tale of two periods. In the first period, the Wild's top four defensemen were a mess and Dubnyk was exposed. He was beaten three times by Brandon Saad, Kane and Marcus Kruger, with Saad scoring 75 seconds in.

But in the second, the Wild pressured, grinded and finally got its forecheck going to hem in the Blackhawks en route to goals by Zucker, Parise and Granlund 8:09 apart to tie the score at 3-3.

Chicago coach Joel Quenne­ville called timeout, and that settled the Blackhawks as the Wild went the next six-plus minutes without a shot.

The Zucker-Coyle-Vanek line had a solid game offensively, creating chances shift after shift. One faceoff after Chicago goalie Corey Crawford robbed Zucker after a Vanek setup, Vanek set up Zucker again to cut the Wild's deficit to 3-1 just 1:21 into the second.

Not long after, Johnny Oduya hit the crossbar, then Dubnyk robbed Patrick Sharp basically on a 2-on-0.

That proved big because on a power play, Vanek found Mikko Koivu's rebound and backhanded a pass to Parise for the goalmouth tap-in, Parise's fourth of the playoffs.

Four minutes later, a suffocating forecheck by the Granlund line and Parise's hard work created a loose puck. Parise fed Granlund for the tying goal.

But then, the Teravainen goal.

"That's a great team over there, you have a couple mistakes and they bury them," Vanek said.

On the Saad goal, Ryan Suter stepped up on him and Saad skated around him after grabbing Suter's stick out of his hand. On the Kane goal, Brad Richards wheeled around Marco Scandella before setting up Kane's one-timer. On the Kruger goal, Jonas Brodin turned the puck over.

Still, Yeo said his team is not "rattled."

"We have a lot of confidence in this group," Dubnyk said. "We understand that's a tough opponent. If we continue to play our game like we did in the second period we're going to give ourselves a chance."