BSN Exclusive: The Avs gave Wild a taste of their own medicine and they "weren't gonna stop"

ST. PAUL, MINN. – This time, Gabe Landeskog’s team didn’t just sit there and take it. Not only did his Avalanche team beat the Minnesota Wild in the house of horrors that had been previously known as the Xcel Energy Center, but Landeskog talked a little smack too.

So many times in Landeskog’s tenure, the Avs have come into Minnesota and had ice shavings sprayed in their face. Not only had they left The X with no points in their pockets, but a little more machismo was deducted with every humiliating loss. This time, the Avs would stand and fight. This time, they stood up to the bullies from Saint Paul and walked tall out of this building, 5-1 victors. The Avs seem to finally believe they are better than the team that has kicked them around too much in recent years.

“We knew it was going to be an intense game,” said Landeskog, whose team won the first season series with the Wild since 2013-14 (3-0-1) and had been 6-12-1 in the last 19 against the Wild, including six shutouts. “We know that they usually come out strong in this building. For us, it was just a matter of weathering the storm the first five, 10 minutes.”

To be honest, this game started just like seemingly all the other ones at Xcel. The Wild got nine of the game’s first 10 shots, controlling the tempo and nearly scoring two or three times. The Avs probably got a little puck luck in that early going, along with strong goaltending from the up-and-down-of-late Semyon Varlamov. That’s what luck and good goaltending can do, though: it helps you weather those storms, and gave the Avs a chance at a lead, which they took on J.T. Compher’s first goal since Feb. 10.

The Avs were able to go into the dressing room and feel fortunate, up the one goal. The Wild came at the Avs even harder at times in the second, outshooting them again 15-10. Along the way, things got nasty, as they are won’t to do between these teams occasionally. Landeskog and Wild defender Nate Prosser got involved in a fracas, and after they were separated and each sent to the penalty box, a bunch of verbal back-and-forth commenced.

The lip readers out there could swear that, at one point, Landeskog told Prosser to “go back on waivers”, along with some other choice words. Prosser came back at Landeskog and seemed eager to win the battle of words, but Landeskog wouldn’t stop yapping in return. Although the Wild scored its only goal 25 seconds after the penalties, the Avs took the lead right back on Nikita Zadorov’s seventh goal.

More important, the Avs seemed to feed off of Landeskog’s intensity and started to be just as physical – and probably more so – against the Wild from there. By the end, Wild players weren’t doing much talking.

Asked what he might have said to Prosser, Landeskog would not get specific, only saying, “It was fun.”

“It’s an emotional game,” he said.

Does he have a prior history with Prosser?

“No, other than playing each other a lot,” he said.

Landeskog would allow that, yes, he and his teammates were getting pretty frustrated with the officiating by at least the mid-point of the game. The Wild got the game’s first four power plays. The Avs didn’t go on the PP until midway in the third, when Jonas Brodin was whistled for holding Carl Soderberg.

“I think I’d be lying if I told you we weren’t frustrated,” Landeskog said. “But the coaching staff did a good job of kind of just calming us down, making sure we were focused on what we had to do. Calls go both ways and throughout the course of a season, you’re on both sides of things like that.”

Jared Bednar acknowledged he and his staff had to do a lot of talking to his players to keep them composed.

“I think they were wrapped up into it emotionally,” Bednar said. “I just felt that our bench started yelling at the refs a little bit and frustrated with it. I just wanted to make sure we were doing what you’ve got to do to win. You’re not going to get every call. You can’t just be standing there on the ice looking for every call. You’ve got to keep  working and when you do get calls you’ve got to capitalize on them.”

Finally, some calls did start going the Avs’ way in the third and they took advantage the best way they could, with two power-play goals. Finally, things started going all in their favor in a building where that just never seems to happen. For those keeping score, the Avs have now outscored the Wild 19-4 in the last three meetings. But the previous two had been at home. This one seemed to mean more.

“It just seemed like we weren’t givin’ up tonight, we weren’t gonna stop,” Landeskog said with a satisfied look. “But now we’ve got a fun challenge ahead of us in St. Louis.”

Indeed, Thursday night, in another house of horrors known as the Scottrade Center.

Whether the Avs can have more fun in such a place again remains to be seen. But after Tuesday, there is hope at least.