The Minnesota Wild continued their homestand on Thursday evening, Mar. 12 against the Philadelphia Flyers. They came into the game riding a big shutout win over the Utah Mammoth also at home earlier in the week on Tuesday, Mar. 10. They had their lineup intact with the exception of Marcus Foligno who was still out and Bobby Brink was out following a hit he took in the Mammoth game.
Jesper Wallstedt got the start in net and the game started in favor of the Flyers who scored a goal late in the first. The Wild responded in the second as they added two of their own to take the lead into the third. They tried to hold on in the third but the Flyers answered back to tie the game and forced overtime and a shootout which the Flyers won with their last shooter.
It clearly wasn’t a great game for the Wild and although they didn’t play a great game, they had some small victories. In this article we’ll take a look at a few takeaways starting with how the Wild’s mistakes caught them.
Wild’s Mistakes Caught Them
The Wild didn’t do themselves any favors as they couldn’t keep a consistent play going. They showed small bursts of their normal game but nothing stayed consistent. It’s one of the biggest battles for every NHL team but the Wild have to find a way to keep the energy level up in all of their games and not just some.
They just struggled to get anything going and although they did bounce back and take a lead, they couldn’t hold it. They can play such strong games but then they’ll have games like this where it feels like they can’t get anything going. They did have some bright spots but overall they need to tighten up their game.
“The way I see it, is like I talked about, it’s mentality, not getting all into that but at the end of the day, winning is not inevitable. There’s a process you have to go through to win and there’s a style of game that every team has an identity and every team has a style that they need to play and when you don’t do that, then you leave yourself vulnerable to get beat and to me that’s a little bit of what I see in some of these games is going on is that we think we’re going to just come out and win a game because we think we have a good team…,” said John Hynes to the media in his postgame press conference about the mindset and how every game is a chance to get the overall effort for the postseason.
Wild’s Boldy & Kaprizov On a Roll
Matt Boldy has been a headline for the majority of the season and he’s earned it. He’s consistently stepped up his game and the Wild have been better because of that. With his goal against the Flyers he reached 74 points which set a new career high and it seems like the sky is the limit for him. He’s been more confident in his game and he’s helped put the Wild’s power play on the map. That was his 37th goal of the season and that was his 10th power play goal of the season.
Just like their game against the Mammoth, Boldy and Kirill Kaprizov scored one right after the other except this time it was Kaprizov who followed Boldy. These two pack a powerful one, two punch and while it would be great to see them on the same line, it’s been even better to see them on separate lines this season and it’s usually paid off.
“Yeah, it’s fun to score, team’s been playing good hockey and creating a lot of chances and making plays, I think that’s the biggest thing so we gotta get back to that a little bit more and a little bit more on our toes but yeah it’s always fun to score,” said Boldy to the media after the game about scoring alongside Kaprizov.
Wild’s Special Teams Deserve Attention
The Wild’s power play continued it’s success against the Flyers as they went 33.3 percent, they scored on one of the three chances they had. Their power play had been a little quiet in their games against the Mammoth and Vegas Golden Knights but it came back to life pretty quickly with their game against the Flyers. Prior to the Golden Knights game they had been on an eight game power play point streak. It did have a slight setback however as the Flyers scored shorthanded that tied the game up 2-2 in the third.
While their power play saw some success so did their penalty kill which has been pretty solid the past couple of months. They’ve had their slip ups but have always bounced back. Especially now that they’ve added a few other names to the roster. Nick Foligno did well as did Michael McCarron against the Flyers. They killed off two consecutive penalties at the end of the third period and into the overtime despite the loss it was good to see.
“Yeah, no I think our kill, we sacrifice ourselves, we’re in good position, we don’t stress when they get a couple good looks, we take our time when we get the puck and we share the puck well. Yeah, I think we’re minimizing their good chances as good as we can,” said Wallstedt in his postgame interview to the media about the strong penalty kill.
The Wild celebrated a few milestones throughout the evening with Jonas Brodin playing in his 900th career game. Mats Zuccarello registered his 500th career assist and as mentioned above Boldy hit a new career high in points with 74.
Related: Wild Fans Can Continue to Trust in Guerin’s Approach
The Wild will keep the homestand going as they host both the New York Rangers and Toronto Maple Leafs in a back-to-back. The Rangers will come to town on Saturday evening, Mar. 14 and the Toronto Maple Leafs will be in on Sunday, Mar. 15. It’ll be interesting to see if they all make it in on time as Minnesota is supposed to be getting hit with quite a bit of snow over the weekend. Hopefully the Wild can look at this game, learn from it and be ready for their back-to-back this weekend.
