DENVER -- Ryan Suter, who played more minutes than any NHLer the past two seasons, will be a marked man this playoff series against the Colorado Avalanche.
Avs coach Patrick Roy knows Wild counterpart Mike Yeo will lean hard on Suter, the Wild's No. 1 defenseman. There's no way around that, so Roy said it's important for the Avalanche to make those minutes hard for Suter.
"We're going to have to finish every check we can on him," Roy said. "It's very simple. If he plays in our end, he might play 45 minutes. But if we play in their end and we finish our checks, we force him to battle when we're going to the net, he needs to push guys around, I mean, we want him to play big minutes.
"He's a special player, let's not kid ourselves. We're going to have to force him to play big minutes."
Yeo said it's no different from when he was an assistant with the Pittsburgh Penguins and they played the Detroit Red Wings in the Stanley Cup Finals.
The Penguins wanted to target future Hall of Fame defenseman Nicklas Lidstrom. Yeo said, like Lidstrom, Suter has a knack for putting himself in positions where he can protect himself and the puck.
"This is not a secret, this is something that's been going on all year," Yeo said. "You always target the other team's top players. It's the playoffs. We're going to try to hit their defensemen, too. They've got a couple guys that are banged up, and we've got to make sure that they know that we're coming."
Yeo said the Wild will try to manage Suter's ice time (he logged more than 41 minutes in Game 1's overtime loss to Chicago last year), but "this is a guy we've seen that when he plays more, he plays better. He's a great player, and when he's fresh and when we can have him on the ice, we want him there."
