Perhaps the Minnesota Wild are very aptly named.
Tied 3-3 in overtime, the Wild decided to try something that many of us (myself included) have never seen before.
While his team had possession of the puck during 3-on-3 overtime, Minnesota’s head coach, John Hynes, decided to pull the goaltender to get an extra attacker on the ice.
Marc-Andre Fleury came sprinting off the ice to allow the Wild to get a fourth’s skater out there as they set up shop in the Nashville Predators’ zone. In Fleury’s place, forward Matthew Boldy hopped over the boards to join his team on the ice.
And then the craziest thing happened. It worked.
With the puck in the offensive zone, the Wild had four forwards on the ice as they sought the game-winner. Kirill Kaprizov took the puck into the zone, before handing it off to Mats Zuccarello along the boards. Zuccarello skated around with it before handing back to Kaprizov.
Kaprizov then gave it back to Zuccarello, who inched closer, then made a beautiful no look pass to Boldy, who had come on the ice for Fleury. Boldy made no mistake, rifling it past Nashville’s Juuse Saros for the win.
Boldy was named the first star after the game.
“It’s not something you do all the time,” coach Hynes said in his postgame availability. “But I think in our position, we want to be aggressive, we want to get two points, we want to continue to fight. We believe in our group and [we’ll] continue to fight to play meaningful games down the stretch and let the chips fall where they may.”
Hynes continued, “I think in the situation we’re in, you know, one point or no points isn’t gonna do us any good, we gotta get two points.”
This move was risky enough as it is: letting your net be empty when the game is still tied. But there was an added layer of danger to the decision made by Hynes.
Per a little known rule in the league rule book, should a team pull their goaltender in overtime and then lose the game, the defeated team also loses the one point in the standings they gained from taking the game to overtime.
The only exception to that rule is if the goaltender had been pulled during a delayed penalty, and the non-offending team had scored on themselves.
It was a crazy gamble to take, but it paid off in spades for the Wild.
Minnesota needs all the points they can get. With the win and the two points, they now sit six points back of the second wld card spot in the Western Conference. One of the teams they are chasing, Nashville, did gain a point today with their overtime loss, so the win for Minnesota is diminished just a little but.
The Predators, currently have 78 points, and are sitting in the top wild card spot. However, a closer opponent for Minnesota to catch might be the Vegas Golden Knights.
Vegas currently has 75 points and are the second wild card spot in the west. Despite loading up at the deadline with the additions of Tomas Hertl, Noah Hanifin, and Anthony Mantha, the Golden Knights are still a team suffering through a lot of injuries.
In any case, watching Minnesota pull that off was crazy. There’s gutsy, and then there’s that. It was unlike anything I have ever seen before.
(Featured photo of Matthew Boldy by Brace Hemmelgarn/USA Today Sports)
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