Wild, besieged with injuries to big players, keep winning: 'It’s what good teams do, I think'

By / / Sports / 7 minutes of reading


WASHINGTON – With four players back in Minnesota, including superstar Kirill Kaprizov and captain Jared Spurgeon, the shorthanded Wild waltzed into Washington Thursday night and pulled off their latest most impressive win of the season.

Against the Eastern Conference-leading Capitals, the Wild outplayed the contender for the majority of the contest despite being massive underdogs. They played one of their most consistent games of the season without any memorable lapses and dominated the third period despite somehow trailing before Marco Rossi — yet again — forced overtime and Matt Boldy — yet again — scored in the shootout to help the Wild take a 4-3 victory at Capital One Arena.

Remember, last year when John Hynes arrived in Minnesota, the Wild won 11 of their first 14 games. Then, in mid-December, just like this season, the Wild sustained a laundry list of injuries that included guys like Kaprizov, Filip Gustavsson and whole host of others.

The team fell apart and never recovered.

Sure, the Wild have been treading water the past three weeks. But they not only have started to pull out of their funk by winning four of their past five games, three of those have come in the four games their Hart Trophy contender has missed.

“Last year when John came, I thought we had a good stretch and we had injuries and, I don’t know, things didn’t go so well for a lot of it and we dig a hole,” Marc-Andre Fleury said after his presumed final start in one of his biggest career-long rival’s buildings. “Every game is a new challenge. There’s no easy nights, obviously, but it’s good to see everybody in the room contribute and helping out to find ways to get points.”

Fleury has the unenviable distinction — or honor, depending on how you look at it — of giving up the most regular season (28) and combined regular season and playoffs goals (41) in Alex Ovechkin’s illustrious career. Ovechkin, now 23 goals from tying Wayne Gretzky’s record of 894 regular-season goals, scores that 28th/41st on a power play in the second period to tie the score at 2.

But Fleury, literally, got the last laugh by gloving down Ovechkin in the shootout to help the Wild improve to 14-3-3 on the road. It was Fleury’s 66th shootout win – extending his NHL record – and he improved to 28-14-3 all-time in appearances against Ovechkin.

“How about that? Two Hall of Famers right there. That’s great, huh?” Hynes said. “Flower came to the bench cramping (after the second shooter) and I didn’t know what was going on. And then he pops back out and makes the save. Vintage Flower there.”

Earlier in the game, after Fleury stoned Ovechkin, the two had a quick chat and shared a laugh.

“I told him, ‘I need one more,’” Ovechkin said. “He said, ‘You already get one.’”

The mutual respect between the two is special.

“I feel fortunate I was able to play in this time,” Fleury said. “He probably owes me a few things for scoring so many goals on me. I helped him out pretty good. I’m glad I got to face him. He’s one of the best and always brings the best out of you. It’s been fun battles with him.”

Added Ovechkin, “It’s 20 years we play against each other. It’s always fun. It’s always a challenge. He’s one of the best goalies out there and it’s a huge challenge for me to play against him.”

Despite the missing bodies, the Wild generated 28 five-on-five scoring chances, according to Natural Stat Trick.

And get this: They had a 13-3 edge in high-danger chances.

The Wild were that consistently good from the drop of the puck. Only Charlie Lindgren kept the Wild from a bigger lead than 2-1 after Ryan Hartman’s first goal in 21 games and Yakov Trenin’s tremendous shorthanded goal with 53 seconds left in the first.

In fact, that was Lindgren’s only blemish. Trenin said he realized Lindgren had no help from his teammates, so he decided to skate through him. Worst case scenario, he said, Lindgren rims the puck for a breakout because it was his only option. When Trenin skated through him, he stripped Lindgren of both the puck and his stick. When Trenin realized he wasn’t getting a penalty, he grabbed the puck and patiently scored a backhanded wraparound goal.

“I saw he lost the stick and puck was right there, and I couldn’t believe it,” Trenin said.

The Wild were all over the Capitals in the second period when Marat Khusnutdinov accidentally took a double minor high-sticking penalty by chipping Martin Fehervary’s tooth. Ovechkin scored a minute later.

But the Wild kept trucking along. Unfortunately they ended up down 3-2 when Fleury somehow lost his footing in a slight collision with teammate Travis Dermott. He toppled over and Fehervary scored the go-ahead goal.

Even Wild boss Bill Guerin asked Fleury in his media scrum if he slipped on a banana peel.

Fleury was able to laugh about it then thanks in part to Rossi’s usual third-period heroics.

The Caps thought they took a 4-1 lead, but referee Kelly Sutherland immediately and correctly waved off Tom Wilson’s goal because he made contact with the puck above the crossbar.

Fifteen seconds later, Rossi scored his 15th goal. The Wild had a good breakout, the Caps’ F3 blew a tire and Rossi and Marcus Johansson had an odd-man rush. Rossi drove the net, redirected Hartman’s shot and instantly scored on his own rebound. It was the third time this season Rossi scored in the last 10 minutes of regulation – a league high.

“Marco, he’s been awesome,” Fleury said. “Every night, he’s been very consistent and always around the net. He always gets in the hard places and finds a way to get big goals for us.”

Rossi, naturally, couldn’t answer why he’s had the clutch gene so often this season.

“It’s just important that we stay together as a team and just stay on our toes,” he said. “You never know when the next chance is going to come. And in these situations it’s just important to stay patient.”

Just like last month at Utah when Rossi forced overtime, Boldy scored in the shootout — his seventh career shootout goal, of which six have been deciding goals.

“I thought we played great all night long, from the start to the end,” Fleury said. “ We kept it simple. I thought we had the puck a bunch. Everybody help each other. I thought we got out of the zone as a team, forechecked as a team and kept it simple: put pucks on net, get tips, rebounds and stuff like that. In our zone, too, blocked some shots and cleared the net, so that was good.”

Hynes, who usually plays it cool after victories, was clearly content.

“We addressed with the team,” Hynes said, “playing winning hockey and what does that entail regardless of the circumstance that you’re in and it was about our competitive nature, it was about being disciplined with our system, being disciplined with the puck and not leaving ourselves in vulnerable positions and making sure we played a consistent game. I thought the guys did a really good job of that in probably a game that you could have got out of it. But we didn’t.”

It sure was an impressive win for a team that can’t get out of this injury bug. Already without Kaprizov, Spurgeon, Jake Middleton and Jakub Lauko, Joel Eriksson Ek was seen limping badly after the game to the X-ray room. There was no update yet.

But nothing seems to faze this group of Wild players. It truly has been a next-man-up mentality all season.

“Seems like it’s kind of been like that all year,” Hartman said. “We’ve had some injuries throughout the year. I don’t know if we’ve been fully, fully healthy since Game 1 until maybe Game Five. I got hurt Game 5, actually. It happens. Every team goes through that. There’s injury spells. You hope it’s not towards the end of the year. Hopefully in our case, we’re getting it out of the way now and we’ll hopefully keep plugging away wins and keep ourselves at the top of the leaderboard.”

Added Boldy, “It’s what good teams do, I think. We’re getting stuff from everyone. There’s no one that’s sitting there doing nothing.”

(Photo: Scott Taetsch / Getty Images)





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About The Author

Avatar of Darlene Mendez
Darlene Mendez is a journalist with Prairie Island News. She has been writing for the paper for over 17 years and has won numerous awards for her stories on local government, education, and sports. Mendez enjoys spending time with her family and friends. She also loves watching sports and reading books.

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