Minnesota wants you to believe Devin Cooley stole this one. He didn't. The Wild handed it to him, for the second straight game, by killing their own chances on the penalty kill.
⚡ Upset:Flames had a 30% chance before puck drop and beat Wild 2–1.
54%
The Wild took three minor penalties inside the first 14 minutes, and the Flames scored on both power-play chances that mattered, Aydar Suniev and then Joel Farabee a few minutes later. Blake Coleman, playing his first game back in Calgary since being traded to Minnesota in the summer, was sitting in the box for the opening goal. He said it himself afterward: "That's two games in a row we lost the special teams battle, and it cost us." The player who took the penalty is the one telling you what beat his team.
He's right. This isn't new. Two nights earlier in Edmonton, Minnesota got dinged for three power-play goals against and didn't score on a single one of their own chances in a 4-3 loss. Against Calgary they went 0-for-4 with the man advantage. A team can run into one hot goalie and call it bad luck. A team that keeps losing the special-teams battle on consecutive nights has a discipline problem.
RatingCooley was good: 36 saves, including a diving stop on Matt Boldy with about two minutes left that kept the Wild off the board when it mattered most. He'd also stopped a pile of shots against Carolina just days before this. Calgary has quietly won most of its recent games behind him. But good goaltending in the third period doesn't erase bad special teams in the first. Minnesota outshot Calgary badly over the final twenty minutes, including a long stretch with Jesper Wallstedt pulled for the extra attacker, and still only got one puck past him all night, Michael McCarron's goal with just over 15 minutes left. Minnesota spent the final twenty minutes trying to apologize for the first twenty, and ran out of time.
John Hynes didn't reach for the goaltending excuse either. His postgame read was about his own lineup: "We need some more contributions throughout the lineup certainly." That's a coach pointing at his own depth chart. And the depth problem is real: a huge chunk of Minnesota's scoring this season has come from two players up front, exactly the kind of top-heavy attack that can't survive giving away extra power plays to the other team.
Calgary's own coach, Ryan Huska, credited his goaltender for surviving a push: "In the third period, our goaltender was our best player." Even the winning side isn't selling the hot-goalie story as the headline. They're saying their goalie bailed out two sloppy penalty kills by the other team.
Minnesota lost this game in Calgary on undisciplined penalties for the second game running. They handed Calgary two power-play goals, got outplayed on the scoreboard, and spent the third period trying to shoot their way out of a hole they'd dug in the first. Blame the goaltender if it makes the drive home easier. The guy who took the penalty already told you who's actually responsible.
