ST. PAUL, Minn. — It’s not only the players who have to be mentally exhausted after a game like the one Thursday night.
It’s the head coach, too.
In a game against the Montreal Canadiens where the Wild lost a pair of top-six forwards on back-to-back first-period shifts, John Hynes took his remaining 10 forwards, threw them into a hopper and somehow came out with with 13 different line combinations at five-on-five during the final 46 minutes of Minnesota’s 3-0 win at Xcel Energy Center.
“Yeah, cold beers are in order, for sure,” Hynes joked after the Wild survived the losses of Mats Zuccarello and Joel Eriksson Ek one after the other.
But the Wild’s early season success has been largely due to tremendous defensive structure. Sure, Filip Gustavsson and his 8-2-2 record helps, but it has been rare this season that the Wild have had to rely on Gustavsson to put on an acrobatic show.
He’s been steady, controls his rebounds, gets freezes when needed and makes the saves one would expect from a No. 1 goalie. Gustavsson and the Wild’s structure is why they have given a league-low 21 five-on-five goals and a league-low 1.31 five-on-five goals per game.
When you have good structure, anybody can play with anybody, Hynes said, and “you can plug and play.”
Thursday was tougher because the Wild lost two forwards at once and Hynes said it’s not easy rolling 10 forwards.
“Like if you had nine you could just go three lines,” Hynes said. “But we found some combinations that we kind of stuck with as it goes through.”
The most consistent line was Kirill Kaprizov–Matt Boldy–Marcus Johansson. They teamed up for Boldy’s winning goal — his fifth winner in the past 11 games — in the second period off a couple of dazzling passes from Kaprizov and Johansson.
Kaprizov ➡️ Johansson ➡️ Boldy 🚨 pic.twitter.com/awv9PYrDIU
— Spoked Z (@SpokedZ) November 15, 2024
“I didn’t do much there,” Boldy said. “It was pretty good just to catch it and shoot it in the net. … Ten forwards, you get tired quick. I thought we stuck together and played a pretty good team game.”
The Kaprizov-Boldy-Johansson trifecta epitomized the Wild’s “plug and play” mantra because Boldy is normally a right wing yet played center and Johansson is normally a left wing and slid over to right wing.
It came out of necessity because Zuccarello’s game ended with 7:08 left in the first period when he took Brock Faber’s shot to his groin. Out came Eriksson Ek, and his night ended with 6:18 left when it looked like he took an awkward stride in front of the net and pulled up grimacing.
Hynes didn’t have updates on either player after the game other than they sustained lower-body injuries. The Wild were already playing without veteran defenseman Jonas Brodin, who sustained an upper-body injury Sunday in Chicago. Declan Chisholm played a strong game next to Jared Spurgeon to replace Brodin, who is considered day to day.
But despite the mishmash of line combinations and a second period that could have been turned upside down because the Wild didn’t take care of the puck safely enough, the Wild controlled much of the third period.
Finally, after Spurgeon broke up an odd-man rush and drew a four-minute power play in the process, Marco Rossi whizzed the second power-play unit’s first goal of the season for a 2-0 lead with 7:41 left.
What was impressive was Rossi had three new teammates on the second unit on their first shift together and two new ones on their second. That’s because Ryan Hartman and Johansson had to be promoted to the first unit to replace Eriksson Ek and Zuccarello. That meant Marcus Foligno, Yakov Trenin and Chisholm, who replaced Spurgeon while he was getting his cut taken care of, were on the second unit.
Before his shifts, Rossi leaned over two teammates on the bench and began talking to Foligno, who normally isn’t on either power-play unit.
What was the smart cookie telling Foligno?
“Moose is a big guy so I know he’s really good net-front,” Rossi said. “I just told him where I want to shoot, and it was actually really good because the first time I tried to shoot short side he was standing there perfect and the next time he was standing on the other side, so it was there for me to shoot on the other side, so he did a really good job of that.”
Marco Rossi with a drag move to the slot to score on the PP and make it 2-0 Wild pic.twitter.com/C4NyfRfr0L
— CJ Fogler 🫡 (@cjzero) November 15, 2024
The Wild went 3 for 3 on the penalty kill for 15 consecutive kills, including one late that Gustavsson mopped up as part of his 19-save effort and seventh career shutout.
“We had a lot of blocked shots (16) today,” said Gustavsson, who is tied for second with eight wins, third with a 2.08 goals-against average and sixth with a .924 save percentage. “It felt like they were in our zone but just didn’t get the puck through sometimes. We did a good job with that. No two-on-ones or three-on-twos that I can think of that were really clear. They had one chance, their second shot of the game (by Kaiden Guhle), on the glove side there.
“That was maybe their best chance all game. We played really solid. We took some penalties, killed them off and played good.”
Then Kaprizov scored an empty-netter for his 11th multi-point game in 16 games this season, which is second in the NHL behind leading scorer Nathan MacKinnon (33 points). Kaprizov has 30 points, becoming the third player born outside North America in the past 15 years to reach 30 points in 16 or fewer games (Leon Draisaitl in 2021-22 and David Pastrnak in 2019-20).
So despite the injuries, the Wild plugged, played and won, which has been a season-long trend.
After playing 10 forwards for 46 minutes, the Wild naturally canceled practice Friday. They’ll gather at TRIA Rink for meetings and treatment, lots and lots of treatment, then count bodies for the biggest test of the season Saturday night against the Dallas Stars, a Central Division foe that has had the Wild’s numbers for years and swept them easily last season.
Hynes is looking forward to the challenge and loved the Wild’s “stick-to-it-ness” against the Canadiens.
“I think that we dug in and when you’re down those (bodies) you have to have shorter shifts,” he said. “You have to make sure that your line changes are good. You have to be aware on the bench. … It was one of those games where there wasn’t a ton going on either way early in the game. Not a lot of shots. Not a lot of action. We never chased it. We never got out of the structure. We never got loose.
“We had some puck decisions in the second that needed to be better, but even when we went out in the third it was, ‘We gotta play the game that we’re in, this is what’s required to win this game,’ and I thought the guys did a very good job of responding to that.”
(Photo of Matt Boldy: Matt Blewett / Imagn Images)
