Dimitri Filipovic

so okay Colorado and Minnesota what does Minnesota need to do to make sure we're not talking about double sweeps here and get back in this series when it finally resumes in Minnesota well it'll help being back at home because obviously playing Colorado is incredibly difficult against an already great team I don't know if we've gotten any clarity yet on the status of Joel Erickson Eck or Jonas Brodine I think they've clearly missed both guys Brodine in particular just playing on that second pair

with Jared Spurgeon.

They did a great job against Ranton and Johnston in round one.

And in his absence, they've had to bump up a guy like Jake Middleton, who's really kind of like a situational third pair defender to play meaningful minutes.

And he's been on the ice for pretty much every goal against.

They've surrendered so far in this series.

So getting those guys back would help a lot.

I do imagine we're going to see

a great effort from them, particularly Game 3, Saturday night at home, to try to kind of punch back and get back into this series.

And even the two losses they had, I mean, Game 1 in particular, but you could make an argument for Game 2 that it was much tighter than the scoreline might have indicated.

Like...

Colorado's terrifying to play against because you could play the perfect period essentially and one shift it could go completely off the rails and then it feels like it snowballs against them and to Minnesota's credit they haven't been when that's happened they haven't necessarily just gone away like they've traded their own punches and made these games fun and interesting and so it's clearly a really good team but I just feel like with this Colorado group right now they can beat you in so many different ways

Nathan McKinnon and Marty Nates just finally started scoring after a pretty quiet round one by their standards.

And I don't really know what you do against them at this point because you take away one thing.

They're just going to beat you in a different way.

Yeah, I mean, by the defensive metrics, he had a good season and they certainly leaned on him largely because they play their top guys very heavily in the offensive zone and kind of free those guys to cook with the puck.

So I think it was warranted in the season where obviously Barkov wasn't available and some of the mainstays from the past have kind of fallen out of that conversation.

I think, I mean, this is nothing new, but voters, I think, generally...

I think voters generally put way too much weight on like you need to score a certain amount to be considered for this award.

And I get there's a two-way element and you're not just going to include guys who play, you know, exclusively like a Nola Chari for five minutes.