The Minnesota Wild may not yet be desperate, but they're getting close.
Game 3 of their 7-game series against the Chicago Blackhawks will kick off at 8 p.m. tonight at the Xcel Energy Center in Minnesota. You can watch or listen to the game via the links provided below.
After Mike Yeo's group managed to claw their way back from a 3-0 deficit to the Chicago Blackhawks in Game 1 of their second-round Western Conference playoff series, it's been mostly downhill.
The Hawks managed to clinch Game 1, then rolled to a convincing victory in Game 2, leaving the Wild with little choice but to bow up and look for a way back into the series - the team recently held a meeting and watched film of the first two contests together.
"We need to get back to our game. Obviously, Game 2 wasn't the Minnesota Wild," forward Jason Zucker said Monday via Dan Myers of NHL.com. "We didn't play our game and it's definitely not good enough. We have to make sure we come out in Game 3 and really play our game and battle hard."
The biggest hurdle for the Wild thus far has been seemingly ineffective defensive play in front of netminder Devan Dubnyk and an inability to contain the Hawks scorers.
"I don't know if it was Chicago's game. It just wasn't our game, that's all," Wild coach Mike Yeo said. "If we're going to be frustrated with anything we should be frustrated with ourselves a little bit here. It would be far more frustrating if we played two good games and came out on the short end."
The Wild's recent playoff history against Chicago suggests good fortune could be coming their way at home - in each of the last two postseason series between these teams, the Wild have returned to Minnesota for Game 3 and last year Yeo's group managed to win both games in St. Paul.
"I think the experience is always good when you've been through that and you know from the experience," Wild captain Mikko Koivu said. "A lot of guys have been here for that. But at the same time, you need to create those experiences again. It's a new year, a new series, so we can't just think that it's going to happen. It's about the preparation right now and making sure we're ready to go for when the puck drops and play the way we can. We can't look too far ahead of ourselves. I think that's what we've been good at the last couple months and that's what we need to do right now."
You can watch the game HERE (Wild) and HERE (Blackhawks) and listen to the radio broadcast HERE.
