The Minnesota Wild certainly played well in forcing the Blackhawks to six games and an overtime period, but Patrick Kane scoring in overtime has become something of a team-killing cliche. With Ryan Suter chasing his check behind the net and Jonas Brodin engaging in a "fly-by," Matt Cooke needed to try to neutralize Kane as a weird bounce off the back-boards got Ilya Bryzgalov moving, and Cooke whiffed, while Kane did not:
The result? A 2-1 OT win for Chicago, who will wait for the winner of the Ducks-Kings series in the Western Conference Finals, and all of one playoff-winning round for Craig Leipold and his $196 million investment in Ryan Suter and Zach Parise, though it's assumed that it's all but inevitable that Austrian-turned-Minnesotan Thomas Vanek will sign with the Wild this summer (as ESPN's Craig Custance suggests in an Insider-only entry). I wonder what excuse Leipold will use if or when he tries to lock out the players and fans again?
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