#5...Colorado 3, Minnesota 2...No Time For Moral Victories

The beauty of hockey...you can take it to a team for 40 minutes, yet get nothing, and in fact lose the game. Jose Theodore deserves all the credit for this game; he made big saves on Brent Burns, Brian Rolston, James Sheppard, Todd Fedoruk, Marian Gaborik, the fan sitting in section 122 row 12 seat 10, Wally The Beer Man, his own defenseman after a gaffe, the usher who sits by the elevators, and finally the nice old lady who works the carved meat sandwich station. You get the picture(so does Woody Paige.)
The beauty of hockey...after dominating the first two periods (with only one goal to their credit), they come out and have a bad first shift, take a penalty, give up a power play goal, and set the tone for the third period, which also meant Paul Stastny getting off the schnide with a beauty of a back handed goal to make the lead an almost insurmountable 3-1 lead.
The beauty of hockey...the home team now has to go to enemy territory, with their backs absolutely against the wall and win, otherwise the local Minnesota golf courses will be seeing a spike in business. Even the numbers are against us, considering the team that wins game 5 has won 80% of every playoff series.
How confident can Minnesota be when considering how well they played last night, and lost to a team that admittedly came out "flat"? Even yet, manage to get more than one puck past Jose Theodore, who apparently is channeling Ken Dryden?
Minnesota desperately needs Marian Gaborik to find his game, or to approach this game in a manner where he can succeed in some form or another. Immense credit does go to Adam Foote and Kurt Sauer, but I believe Gaborik has to alter his game in the sense of the way he attacks. This time of year no team in their right mind are gonna give you the space to go wide around a defender, or let him push the puck through their skates to get around the D. That's the half of it; there is no doubt that Gaborik has put just an insane amount of pressure on himself to be the man, especially this time of the year, and its a huge reason why Minnesota is now down in the series 3 games to 2.
I thought Erik Reitz was solid, considering last night was his first game in a month, and his first NHL game this year. He played smart, making a nice poke check to negate a 2 on 1 and had a few nice hits. If it were up to me, he'd be in the lineup tomorrow night. On the whole the D played well, until that Sean Hill penalty which turned the tide at the beginning of the third.
So that's where it stands; They have to win Saturday, but the mindset could be very fragile; either build off of last night and move forward, or shrink back into pity me mode. You can count on Colorado moving in for the kill.
-Judd Zulgad wrote a piece ripping Dan Terhaar and Mike Greenlay for the amount of pissing and moaning made about the calls and non-calls that Minnesota isn't getting.