Tonight at 9:30 p.m. ET, the Minnesota Wild and Chicago Blackhawks hit the ice at the United Center in Chicago for Game 1 of their Round 2 best-of-seven series as part of the Stanley Cup Playoffs. The game can be live streamed for free here. Minnesota fans can hear all of the action on WCCO 830 while Chicago fans can do the same on WGN 720.
Minnesota stunned the Colorado Avalanche with a Game 7 overtime win to advance while Chicago roared back from a 2-0 deficit against St. Louis in Round 1 and rattled off four straight wins to put them away in six. The Wild last played on Wednesday while the Blackhawks have been off since Sunday.
The Wild took three out of five meetings in the regular season while the Blackhawks took the last game these teams played which was in Chicago on April 3. Chicago defeated Minnesota in five games in last year's Western Conference Quarterfinals.
The Wild has a very short turnaround after Nino Niederreiter notched the game-winning overtime goal in Colorado on Wednesday, but the team is confident that it's ready.
"[We] started working on the plane and came home and got a real, good, solid three hours of sleep," Wild coach Mike Yeo said Thursday in Chicago per NHL.com. "We've been back at it [Thursday]. There's not going to be an incredible amount of secrets."
The Blackhawks won't be taking the Wild lightly despite the fact that it was expected they'd face the Central Division champion Avalanche coming into the series.
"We saw it last year against these guys in the playoffs too," forward Patrick Sharp told NHL.com. "We were the top seed. They were the eighth seed and everybody just expected us to walk through the series. It was a tough series. I know it was a five-game series, but every game was close and they present a lot of challenges."
Captain Jonathan Toews, who didn't practice on Thursday due to illness but is good to go tonight, tied for the team lead in the first round with seven points off of three goals and four assists while defenseman Duncan Keith also had seven points off of two tallies and five helpers. Patrick Kane (three goals, three assists) and Brent Seabrook (two markers, four helpers) each had six points in Round 1 for Chicago, though Seabrook was suspended for three games during it.
Zach Parise paced the Wild and is tied for the NHL Playoffs lead in points with 10 off of three goals and seven assists while Mikko Koivu lit the lamp once and added five helpers for six points and five players had five points, including Charlie Coyle, who tied with Parise with a team-leading three goals while adding two assists.
Goaltender Darcy Kuemper took the starting job in net from Ilya Bryzgalov during Round 1, but he left Game 7 in the third period with an undisclosed injury and won't be available tonight.
Bryzgalov will start and is 1-2 with a 4.25 goals-against average and a .826 save percentage. Corey Crawford will counter in the crease for the Blackhawks after going 4-2 in the first round and ranking third in the playoffs in GAA (1.98) and save percentage (.935).
The Wild and Blackhawks commence their best-of-seven Round 2 series with Game 1 tonight live from the United Center in Chicago as part of the 2014 Stanley Cup Playoffs.
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