ST. PAUL — It’s not so much that the Minnesota Wild were making excuses for themselves after a 5-2 loss to the Boston Bruins on Saturday afternoon at Xcel Energy Center. They were simply being realistic.
The fact is, had a couple of officials’ calls gone the other way, the whole game might have been different.
It started with Matt Dumba scoring a goal early in the game that would have put the Wild up 2-0 only to have the officials rule that Connor Dewar had been offside. It continued with Matt Boldy scoring a goal midway through the game that would have tied the score 2-2 only to have the officials rule that he himself was offside.
“They were both offsides,” coach Dean Evason said. “There’s nothing to complain about.”
As much as that might be true, the Wild were clearly frustrated with how things played out.
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“It’s the way it goes sometimes,” Marcus Johansson said. “The first one I think was obvious when we looked at it. The second one was really close, so that was tough.”
Looking at the offside call on Dewar, there was no doubt he preceded the puck into the offensive zone, as he was about a foot over the blue line before the Wild carried the puck across.
Looking at the offside call on Boldy, there appeared to be more gray area as he flipped the puck into open ice and appeared to enter the offensive zone at the same time.
“Obviously, they’ve got a lot more views then we get to see,” Boldy said. “They saw something that was definitive if they’re calling it offsides when the initial call was onside. You put the trust into the refs and the league watching, so (there’s) not much we can do. It’s unfortunate.”
Credit the Wild for bouncing back. Though some teams might have hung their heads after a couple of bad breaks, the Wild continued to make things tough on the Bruins. The score remained close until the final minutes of the game.
“We played hard,” Evason said. “We didn’t quit. We stayed the course and the guys worked their butts off. We just didn’t get the result.”
Now, the Wild must shift their focus to a game against the Washington Capitals on Sunday afternoon at Xcel Energy Center.
“We get 2 inches on either side of those on those pucks coming over the blue line and we’re right there,” Dumba said before referencing the team’s 14-game point streak coming to a close. “It was a hell of a run. Now, it resets us. We want to bring our best tomorrow.”
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