Wild Looks To Bounce Back From Game 4 Debacle Friday
ST. PAUL, Minn. (WCCO) -- You never want to overreact to a win or a loss in the Stanley Cup Playoffs, but what happened Wednesday night at Xcel Energy Center will certainly test the mental makeup of this Wild team.
After a 6-1 debacle that now has this series tied 2-2 headed back to St. Louis, David McCoy tells us how they plan to put this behind them and bounce back Friday night, if they can.
After the worst loss in Wild playoff history, there was no sugar-coating what happened Wednesday night.
"We were just brutal. It was just a bad game by us," Captain Zach Parise said.
"You can't give a team a 3-0 lead and it didn't have the feel of the type of game that we were going to come back. We weren't on it from the start and we got worse as it went," Wild coach Mike Yeo said.
As dominant was the Wild was the previous game, could the problem have been overconfidence?
"Possibly. We might have come in a little cocky," Parise said. "We went from feeling awesome about ourselves, feeling like we can't be beat, after last game. And then you get a little dose of reality tonight and a little slap in the face. I saw throw it away and move on.
Easier said than done? The worry now for the Wild has to be will it carry over into the next game? Could it affect their confidence and cost them the rest of the series? Will it be harder to throw it away and move on than, say, they'd lost but at least played well?
"Not necessarily, I mean, does it make a difference whether we lost in triple OT tonight or we got blown out like we did? I mean a loss is a loss right now, so, right now it's 2-2, so move on and start over," Parise said.
"The thing about playoffs, it doesn't matter if we'd lost that game 1-0, we'd be in the exact same position we are. So, we all know we can be better, I can be better, and we will be," Devan Dubnyk said. "We've stuck together all year and we've been good all year and I have no question or worry that we'll be ready to go for next game."
The winner of that next game Friday night is then in position to close out the series.
