JR Gives Wild Series Lead
He was the last player acquired by the Wild, in a deal consummated with the Bruins mere seconds before the trade deadline.
And indeed, it seemed to take Jeremy Roenick some time to find his place on the team. The veteran center was skating primarily on the third and fourth lines these playoffs, that is until Saku Koivu went down with an eye injury.
Since then Roenick has seen massive ice-time and put together a solid post-season. Monday’s game though was his biggest moment as he both opened the scoring and then ended the game.
Roenick won the opening face off in Overtime back to Dan McGillis who slammed it into the Thrasher zone. Marian Hossa quickly dug the puck out of the corner and fed it back to the point to McGillis who fired it on net. Roenick managed to get his stick on the puck, deflecting it over the shoulder of Garth Snow, just 9 seconds into the extra frame.
JR says he’s relieved to have become a contributing member of the team.
“Certainly you don’t want to see a guy like Saku go down to injury, particularly an injury like that. But it has given me the opportunity to play a bigger role on this club and prove that I still have something left in the tank”.
With the goal the Wild have their first lead of the series, 2 games to 1. GM Farhall says there’s still work to do.
”That is a veteran team over there, and they are not simply going to roll over. There’s too many leaders…too many guys that have been in this situation before. We are going to have to continue to get better as this series goes on.”
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