1. All even.
We've written and talked about ad nauseam lately about these teams playing one-goal games.
Happened in six (basically seven) games in eight regular season meetings and again in Sunday's Game 1.
Well, what do ya know, Game 2 came down one bounce as well. This time, it was the Golden Knights that came out on top, scoring a pair of second-period goals after Matt Dumba put the Wild in front midway through the middle period.
Alex Tuch scored a power-play goal with under a minute to play in regulation to make it a two-goal margin, but this was a one-goal game from the moment it started.
The win for Vegas means the series will come back to the Twin Cities knotted at 1-1.
2. A better start.
Wild coach Dean Evason stressed that his club needed a better first period in Game 2 than it got on Sunday in Game 1.
For one, he expected a big push from Vegas after Minnesota secured a victory in the series' opening game. But the first period on Sunday was simply not sustainable. The Knights fired 19 shots on Wild goaltender Cam Talbot, and luckily for MInnesota, Talbot was up to the task stopping every single one of them.
His first-period heroics allowed Joel Eriksson Ek to play the hero 3 1/2 minutes into overtime.
On Tuesday night, the Wild came out and overwhelmed the Knights in the opening 20 minutes, outshooting Vegas 17-10 and piling up more than a half dozen grade-A scoring chances.
The only similarity? Like he was all day long on Sunday, Marc-Andre Fleury was outstanding all period long, stoning the Wild at every turn.
Talbot was good too on his 10 saves, making a handful of clutch stops and pokechecking a puck off the stick of Mark Stone on a breakaway.
It was the most entertaining scoreless period you'd ever want to see.
3. The offense arrives ... sort of.
It looked like it'd be another scoreless tie deep into the Vegas night as Talbot and Fleury were dueling for a second-straight game.
