Tarasenko is approaching 900 career regular-season NHL games and is one of the Wild\u2019s top goal scorers this season. His overtime winner against Dallas on March 21 gave him his third 20-goal season in the past seven seasons and ninth overall.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He knows about the preparation it takes to focus on not only his team\u2019s ability to play in the playoffs but learning how opponents play and to make adjustments accordingly when facing the same team potentially seven times in a row.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the most important part is how well you\u2019re able to react when things don\u2019t go well,\u201d Tarasenko said. \u201cChange your mindset sometimes. There are some devastating losses. How quickly you can recover.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
In addition to the right personnel on the team, as Sturm spoke about, a good playoff run also requires a strong special-teams game, with the power play and penalty kill needing to be solid. Sometimes it\u2019ll take the power play to step up and score when 5-on-5 goals are at a premium, or maybe the penalty kill needs to lock it down when the team ends up taking five or six penalties in a game.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIdeally, you want one of them to be outstanding,\u201d Sturm said. \u201cThere\u2019s going to be a game where either special teams is going to need to win you a game.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Wild\u2019s power play is ranked in the top five of NHL teams with a middle-of-the-pack, yet much-improved from last season, penalty kill.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In games down the stretch of the regular season before and after the Wild officially clinch a spot in the playoffs, coach John Hynes wants to see a strong structure and attention to details in individual and the team game, \u201cplaying to the identity that gives us a chance to be a difficult team to play against,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we\u2019re executing coming out of our end, we\u2019re playing fast up the ice,\u201d Hynes added. \u201cWe\u2019re able to make good puck decisions, where if we have time and space, we can attack off the rush and put teams in trouble that way.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut then also a big part of our team game is that puck-pursuit game, puck-pressure game in the offensive zone.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Once the playoffs hit, that preparation is heightened when it comes to intensity and focus, according to Bogosian.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cEverything is just another level, it\u2019s a different speed,\u201d Bogosian said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
When everything all comes together, the sacrifices and preparation made by teammates to achieve the common goal of winning the hardest trophy to win in sports, the feeling of winning can\u2019t be replicated, he added.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cGuys will experience a lot of different things throughout their life and their career,\u201d Bogosian said. \u201cThat\u2019s just an experience in itself.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tarasenko is approaching 900 career regular-season NHL games and is one of the Wild\u2019s top goal scorers this…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":563700,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-563699","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-nhl","9":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563699","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=563699"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563699\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/563700"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=563699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=563699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=563699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}