Wild notes: Torchetti alters lineup for Game 5

DALLAS – With the Wild facing elimination Friday night, coach John Torchetti made a couple tweaks to the lineup in Game 5 against the Dallas Stars.

Right wing Jordan Schroeder made his series debut and center Jarret Stoll, scratched during Games 3 and 4 at home, returned to the lineup. Justin Fontaine and Zac Dalpe were removed.

One surprise is veteran Ryan Carter didn't draw back in for minor league bruiser Kurtis Gabriel.

Schroeder, who scored two goals and two assists in 26 games this season, played three scoreless playoff games for the Wild last year.

But that streak ended 5 minutes, 16 seconds into the first period Friday when he scored to give the Wild a 2-0 lead in a game the Wild eventually won 5-4 in overtime.

"Everyone wants to be in the lineup. You're upset if you're not," Schroeder said.

Schroeder was out of the lineup, he was told, because he wasn't a penalty killer, something Fontaine has done all season. But Fontaine was on the ice for both of Dallas' power-play goals in Game 4.

"I PK'd a lot down in Iowa this year, and I thought it was an element I could get into," Schroeder said. "At that point in the season they didn't want to mess with things, and I understand. Do I want to be in? Of course. If you don't want to be in, then why even play the game?"

Schroeder, a restricted free agent this summer, hoped to bring a speed and skill element to Friday's game and use the freshness of not playing as energy.

"I'll definitely have some jump," he said.

Stoll, an unrestricted free agent this summer, committed a Game 1 turnover to Ales Hemsky that led to a series-opening goal by Radek Faksa that bothered Torchetti.

"You never want to sit out," he said. "You always want to help your team win, and be in the locker room with the guys, and battling on the ice with the guys. It will be good to get back in."

Friday was the first opportunity to get defenseman Ryan Suter's reaction to Torchetti's pointed comments after Wednesday's game that Suter, even though Torchetti never used his name, should have got into the shooting lane and blocked a Hemsky shot that resulted in a power-play goal.

"I don't know if he went after me," Suter said. "My focus is on [Friday night] and deal with that later. It doesn't matter. We're focused on [Friday] and what happened last game doesn't really matter right now."

One area the Wild had done a quality job of heading into Friday's game is slowing down Stars offensive defenseman John Klingberg. He scored two overtime winners against the Wild in the regular season and finished fifth in the NHL in scoring among defensemen with 58 points.

Klingberg entered Game 5 with no points and a minus-4.

"I need a little bit of improved play of him," Stars coach Lindy Ruff said. "I think at times he's tried some high-skill plays at inopportune times, but it's his first go-round. He's made some unbelievable plays for us this year and the same type of plays that maybe he's tried inside this series have hurt him.

"I think the first thing in my discussion with him [Friday morning] was take care of your own end first. If you take care of that first, everything else will usually take care of itself. He's a great kid, he's a student of the game and I think he's come a long ways as a player this year."

Ruff has gained a lot of respect for Torchetti, the Wild's interim coach.

"He was diligent with some of the matchups he wanted to try to get inside the game and it made it extremely tough for me to get away from some of them," said Ruff, who tried rotating lines in Minnesota. "I think sometimes when you're losing you do that out of desperation. At the same time, I've been able to get favorable matchups here, which makes it tough on him."

Stars forward Patrick Sharp is a fan of Torchetti, who coached him in Chicago.

"He was an easy guy to talk to," Sharp said. "If you had anything going on personally, he was always there to be a friend, to be a mentor. I was sad to see him go and happy for his success."