Wild Poised For 'Unemotional' Game 4
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- It's going to be tough for folks to get to sleep after Game 4 is over.
What will be the keys to Wednesday night's matchup? Start with what you don't do.
So you lead the series 2-1. The next step? Be careful to adjust, just not too much.
"It might be a little bit, you know, little thing here, little thing there, and I would expect it would be similar with their team," Wild Coach Mike Yeo said. "But, you know, the base of your game is not going to change."
It's difficult to tell how much it matters, but the winner gets home ice.
"I think in this league to be successful, you have to be able to win on the road. But, you know, at home you do want to use it to your advantage," Wild forward Chris Stewart said. "It could be a difference come playoff time and, you know, later down in the season. So we ought to win on home ice."
With the white playoff hockey towels in the Xcel Energy Center on fire Wednesday night, it will get loud and emotions will run high. Counter to that is what the Minnesota Wild want to be – unemotional.
Maybe the biggest key is what it has been the entire series: Don't retaliate, don't get sucked into a side show.
"Discipline is been huge for us, it's been huge for us, and, you know, all that stuff that eveyone's talking about after the whistle, and for us to stay out of it," Wild forward Charlie Coyle said.
Because there won't be any surprises. These teams are what they are, and that is two high-level operations getting it on in NHL Playoff hockey.
"They're going to compete, they're going to play, they're going to come out hard tonight, so I doesn't matter what happened in the past, it's all about today, and we got to come out with our best game here in Game 4," wild defenseman Jordan Leopold said.
The puck drops at 8:30 p.m. at St. Paul's Xcel Energy Center.