Parise welcomed Dubnyk to Wild with generous gesture

Of all the saves Devan Dubnyk's made for the Minnesota Wild this season, none was bigger than one made for Dubnyk by Zach Parise.

It happened tens of thousands of feet off the ground as the new teammates were sitting next to each other on the flight back to Minnesota after a win over Buffalo on Jan. 15.

Dubnyk, who the day before was traded to the Wild from the Coyotes, was asking Minneapolis native Parise where a good place in town was to move his wife and 1-year-old baby boy.

As it happened, Parise's house was on the market and he offered on the spot to rent it to his team's new goalie.

"Really not that big of a deal," Parise said. "It got blown up to something it really wasn't."

Easy for him to say.

"It's unbelievable," Dubnyk said. "I've said thanks to him about a thousand times because there's nothing I can say or do to make him understand how much that's helped us to be able to come and get my family there right away into a beautiful house that's right by where all the other (players') families are. That's just an incredible thing for him to do."

Being traded mid-season can be tough on players, but with Parise's help, Dubnyk said he felt comfortable right away.

"It felt like a great fit right from the start," he said.

Dubnyk was taken in the first round (14th overall) by Edmonton in 2004 but never did much with the Oilers, Predators (for two games) or the Coyotes. When the Wild decided to go after Dubnyk, his career record was 70-82-24 and he owned an ugly .910 save percentage. Then he went 27-9-2 with Minnesota and is a major reason the Wild reached the second round of the playoffs.

One player who isn't amazed by this transformation is fellow Canadian and Blackhawks winger Patrick Sharp, who played with Dubnyk in the 2012 World Championships.

"It kind of opened my eyes to him back then," Sharp said. "I thought he was an underrated goalie in the league. It's nice to see he's got a chance to be the guy playing a significant number of games on a good team."

A bit shell-shocked:

Before losing the first three games of their second-round series to the Blackhawks, the Wild hadn't lost back-to-back games in regulation since Jan. 11 and 13, a span of 48 games.

"I don't think anybody in here expected to be in this situation, myself included," Devan Dubnyk said of the Wild's 0-3 hole coming into Game 4 on Thursday. "Just coming off a good feeling against a good team (the Blues) in the first round, we felt good coming into this series. We certainly knew it was going to be an extremely difficult series against this group, but did not expect to be down three-nothing."

Tip-ins:

The Hawks had given up at least 1 power-play goal in five straight games until they killed off 3 PP opportunities by the Wild in Game 3. … The Hawks had just 4 power plays in this series' first three games. … In just seven games, Anaheim's Corey Perry and Ryan Getzlaf led the league in playoff points with 14 and 12, respectively, entering Thursday's action. Patrick Kane was tied for third with 11 points in nine games. … Corey Crawford's playoff save percentage improved from .809 after the first two games against Nashville to .916 after shutting out the Wild in Game 3 on Tuesday. … On his 29th birthday, Wild defenseman Nate Prosser saw his first playing time this postseason with Jordan Leopold sitting as a healthy scratch.