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Mike Yeo discovered Saturday that revenge is a dish best served on a familiar sheet of ice.
His old team demonstrated that rationalization is a slippery slope.
Yeo's Blues beat the Wild in overtime in Game 5 at Xcel Energy Center, winning the first-round playoff series four games to one, leading to this stunning quote from the coach of the team that not so long ago led the Western Conference:
"They weren't the better team,'' Bruce Boudreau said of the Blues. "But they won four games.''
Hockey players deserve their reputation for physical toughness, but Boudreau offered a reminder that too often hockey people console themselves with minor and moral victories instead of acknowledging reality.
The Wild lost this series while losing all three of its home games. It has lost seven of its past eight home playoff games. It has lost 12 of its past 15 playoff games overall.
Since owner Craig Leipold spent about $200 million on two premier players, his team is 2-5 in playoff series and has not advanced beyond the second round. This season, coming off the best regular season in franchise history and having nemesis Chicago swept out of the way by Nashville in the first round, the Wild was poised for its biggest postseason run since Andrew Brunette was skating.
"This year is a totally different feeling,'' defenseman Ryan Suter said. "This year I thought we had a team that could go far.''
Boudreau and too many players will try to take solace in the closeness of the games rather than questioning why a high-scoring team shot blanks in a five-game series against a statistically inferior opponent.
The Blackhawks aren't making excuses. They're threatening major changes after their playoff exit.
If the Wild wants to be taken seriously as a contender, Leipold needs to adopt the same standards.
The Wild scored four even-strength goals in a five-game series. And it lost when an average player, Magnus Paajarvi, glimpsed an open net in overtime and hit it with the game-winning shot. That's exactly what the Wild failed to do for most of the series.
"It's a best-of-seven series,'' Mikko Koivu said. "If you get through, you deserve it.''
Exactly. Too many hockey players rationalize failure by citing effort. This isn't grade-school soccer. They aren't playing for pats on the back and orange slices. Boudreau and his players are handsomely paid to win. They failed, and making excuses won't make this team better.
"It's not what we set out to do,'' Charlie Coyle, always a realist, said. "I'm not happy with it at all.''
Yeo was classy in victory. He said, "It's not about me.'' He's being modest.
Yeo outcoached his successor. He devised a defensive system that frustrated the Wild forwards and allowed the Blues to win even when they were giving up dozens of chances.
He also watched his former players perform in exactly the manner that got him fired in Minnesota. The Wild didn't score enough goals, and didn't get enough production from its fleet of promising — can we still call them "promising?'' — young players.
Mikael Granlund, Nino Niederreiter, Jared Spurgeon, Matt Dumba and Marco Scandella failed to score a goal. Jason Zucker didn't score one until the third period on Saturday. Coyle came alive, but only after a quiet start to the series.
This group's body of work suggests it is simply not good enough to win in the playoffs. And the general manager who amassed this talent also has traded away a buffet of draft picks and may not have many avenues by which to fix what's wrong.
Boudreau arrived with a reputation for regular-season brilliance and big-game failures. He justified both.
"We showed who we are,'' Koivu said. "We played right to the end.''
The problem with this group is the end always arrives in April. Saturday at the X, the Wild reminded us that playoff hockey is fabulous entertainment, and that we never get to see enough of it in person.
Jim Souhan's podcast can be heard at MalePatternPodcasts.com. On Twitter: @SouhanStrib. jsouhan@startribune.com
