The Minnesota Wild came into Tuesday’s game having lost five of their last six.
Over that stretch, starting goaltender Devan Dubnyk was a disaster — stopping under 85 per cent of the shots he faced and getting yanked out of his net on more than one occasion.
But a visit from the Montreal Canadiens had potential to be a cure-all for Dubnyk and the Wild, even if they had come to town on a three-game winning streak.
It proved to be exactly that. The home team recorded its eighth consecutive win against the Canadiens — a 7-1 laugher. And Dubnyk, who had a lifetime record of 7-1-1, a 2.21 goals-against average and a .929 save percentage against them, made 29 saves.
Our takeaways from the blowout:
[snippet id=4269767]
Niemi deserved better, Canadiens didn’t
The Canadiens’ backup had sat idle for seven straight games and started off this one exhibiting virtually no signs of rust.
Antti Niemi made huge saves on Nino Niederreiter, Zach Parise, Joel Eriksson Ek and Jonas Brodin before Niederreiter tipped home the game’s first goal 14 minutes in. And he shut the door while the Canadiens slept their way through the rest of the first period, allowing Montreal to escape the first 20 minutes without any further damage done.
Outside of the first 10 minutes of the second period, over which the Canadiens put together a run that saw them outshoot the Wild 8-1, the team just didn’t give Niemi a fighting chance.
Matt Dumba, Charlie Coyle, Eric Staal and Jared Spurgeon got open looks to give the Wild a 5-0 lead before the second frame came to a close. Another one for Dumba early in the third, and one for Parise, had coach Claude Julien mercy-pulling Niemi with 13:50 to play.
Carey Price, who replaced Niemi, had to turn aside a Parise breakaway to make his first stop. He stopped the bleeding at seven.
Special teams catastrophe
The Canadiens killed off seven of eight penalties in a 3-2 win over the Chicago Blackhawks on Sunday, but they allowed Minnesota to score on all four of its power plays Tuesday.
Their own power play was once again an unmitigated disaster, producing virtually no scoring chances on two opportunities and allowing a short-handed goal 13 seconds into their first chance.
If Shea Weber’s return to Montreal’s lineup seven games ago was supposed to make all the difference for the team’s struggling power play, his presence hasn’t had its desired effect in that department. The Canadiens have converted on one of 18 opportunities since he came back in the last week of November.
[relatedlinks]
Trouble with Minnesota’s style of play
Without reading too deeply into a game the Canadiens probably feel should be filed and forgotten, the slow-it-down, grind-it-out style the Wild employ gave the boys in bleu, blanc et rouge fits.
Even if you dismiss the way they fell apart in the second period, the way the Canadiens were struggling to break out of their own end earlier — while the game was within reach — was indicative of the Wild’s ability to force play to the outside and capitalize on the size mismatch between them and their opponents.
We saw something similar from the Canadiens in a recent 3-1 loss to the San Jose Sharks, with the damage being done before they responded with a strong second period and a really strong third period. And we also saw the same story unfold in three losses to the Buffalo Sabres, who play similarly to the Wild.
Mike Reilly could help…
Reilly was scratched from Tuesday’s game against his former team after a horror-show performance against the Blackhawks on Sunday.
The defenceman’s speed and his puck-moving can help the Canadiens counter teams like the Wild, Sharks and Sabres moving forward. But it would be a fallacy to suggest he could have made all the difference for the Canadiens in Tuesday’s game.
Perhaps being scratched in this situation — not just against his old team but also in his home state — will get him to play with the urgency Julien is looking for.
“You can’t keep turning pucks over with sloppy plays,” said Julien on Nov. 26 to explain why Reilly had found himself scratched from a sequence of games. “He knows that. So that’s where we need consistency. He has the potential, but you can’t have a guy in your lineup that you don’t know what you’re going to get on a nightly basis.”
There have been games where Reilly has been Montreal’s best defenceman, but there are others where he has been its worst. That’s why Tuesday marked the sixth time he’s sat out.
[snippet ID=3322139]
Dumba on fire
He can be a lethal player and he showed it on both goals he scored in this one.
The first one Dumba scored was a laser of a one-timer on the power play, beating Niemi on the blocker side. His second one also came on the power play and beat Niemi on the blocker side, when he cruised into the slot on his strong side, received a pass from Mikael Granlund, and wired a wristshot bar-down.
That gave Dumba his 12th goal of the season, which leads all other NHL defencemen by two.
Coyle came to play
In a bit of a funk — and with his name being bandied about in trade rumours — Coyle played one of his best games of the season.
Replacing the injured Mikko Koivu in the middle of the ice, Coyle was a threat to score on a couple of occasions early in the game before he broke through short-handed in the second period.
He undressed Weber on the play and finished on the backhand side. It was a beauty.
If the Canadiens are among the teams interested — it’s been reported they’ve shown interest throughout the years — they got a pretty good taste of what the six-foot-three, 26-year-old could add to the equation for them.
