The Wild Got Caught Robbing the Bellagio – Minnesota Wild

Maybe the officials robbed the Minnesota Wild of a Game 4 victory.

What in the name of Todd Bertuzzi was Tomas Hertl doing on top of Ryan Hartman near Minnesota’s net when Mark Stone scored that goal? 

We’ll never know if LTIR Stone intended to pinball the puck off his Czech teammate into Minnesota’s net. Surprisingly, there wasn’t a call there, even offsetting penalties. Still, after a mostly hands-off first two games, the new officiating crew exercised its authority.

They just didn’t seem to know which penalties to enforce.

Minutes later, Jared Spurgeon scored to tie it 3-3. The Wild hung on through the third and overtime but ultimately lost. They are 0-5 when leading 2-1 in the playoffs. In 2022 and 2023, they never recovered after losing Game 4. 

Could this be the beginning of Minnesota’s (semi) annual playoff death spiral?

Seen through a different lens, the Vegas Golden Knights inflicted a mortal wound in a hard-fought battle. The Knights had nine takeaways; Minnesota had six. The Wild gave the puck away 17 times; Vegas only had 11 giveaways. 

The Golden Knights outshot Minnesota 46 to 32 and had more high-danger scoring chances (19 to 14). Perhaps most damningly, the Wild took more penalties (4 to 2), allowing the league’s second-best power play to score two goals against their 30th-ranked penalty kill.

Minnesota didn’t get robbed so much as they got caught trying to steal a series.

The Sportsbooks favored Vegas -235 before the series started. Moneypuck gave the Wild a 32.6% chance to win it. Even after Minnesota won Games 2 and 3 to take a 2-1 series lead, Vegas favored the Golden Knights -142 to take the series. 

The Wild are the underdog, and they’re trying to leave Las Vegas having written a story worthy of 16 mm film (and an 8 mm actor).

Instead, the Golden Knights caught them trying to rob the Bellagio.

In the 2001 film Ocean’s 11, George Clooney and Brad Pitt assemble an 11-person team who try to rob the Bellagio, Mirage, and MGM Grand. 

Clooney is Danny Ocean, an ex-con who puts the group together. Pitt is his partner in crime. Matt Damon plays a pickpocket, Don Cheadle is an explosives expert, and Bernie Mac is a con man. Carl Reiner is an even older con man.

The Wild are Ocean’s 11, except the league only allows them to have nine, and four are Carl Reiner. They’re trying to steal a series against Vegas while in cap hell and with an aging team. Expecting Zach Bogosian and Gustav Nyquist to play like they did in their 20s is like asking Reiner, born the year the Toronto St. Patricks won the Stanley Cup, to do a backflip in the casino vault.

The Wild are up against it in this series. Still, they had a chance to steal a game and go up 3-1 on the Golden Knights. Instead, they’re tied 2-2 and play two of the next three games in Vegas. The last two times they went up 2-1, they lost three straight. 

It’s tough to get caught robbing the Bellagio and assume they’ll pull off a heist at the Mirage and MGM Grand.

Puck drops at 8:30 pm on Tuesday.

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