ST. PAUL, Minn. — This is how bad things are for the Wild.
On Tuesday, the Wild signed a fifth goalie to add to the system at the league-minimum salary just in case they needed an emergency call-up if Filip Gustavsson or Marc-Andre Fleury got hurt or sick. It was necessary with Iowa goalie Jesper Wallstedt injured.
Thursday morning, with a bug crawling from player to player for the past week, Fleury predictably became the latest Wild player to call in sick.
Well, guess what?
That same goalie the Wild signed just two days earlier, Dylan Ferguson? He got hurt Wednesday night in San Diego on the very same day he cleared waivers. So the Wild, even after the forethought to sign him just in case, couldn’t even call him up to back up Gustavsson on Thursday night against the Colorado Avalanche.
Seriously, you truly can’t make up what’s gone on with the Wild the past several weeks. Every time they get one player back, two more go down, and they’re usually their most key guys.
So there was an ominous feeling all day Thursday going into a game against Nathan MacKinnon, Mikko Rantanen and Cale Makar after Brock Faber and Jonas Brodin joined Kirill Kaprizov (seven games and counting) and Jared Spurgeon (four games and counting) on the sideline.
“We gotta burn something or, I don’t want PETA calling me, but sacrifice a goat or something,” left wing Marcus Foligno joked after a 6-1 loss to the Avs. “We gotta do something here. It’s crazy.”
GO DEEPER
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No professional athlete ever wants to use injuries as an excuse, and the Wild have done yeoman’s work this season in not only overcoming injuries but winning in spite of them.
But let’s be realistic about the fact the Wild were in tough Thursday night going up against the Avs’ top guns without their superstar and three top defensemen.
With all these short-term injuries, the Wild’s salary cap is such an issue that they couldn’t even call up fourth goalie Samuel Hlavaj to back up Gustavsson because he was too expensive at $875,000. In fact, the Wild had to retroactively place Jakub Lauko on long-term injured reserve just to be able to squeeze defenseman David Jiricek onto the roster for his Wild debut.
So Fleury, sick as heck, was forced to back up, which also meant Gustavsson had to survive all 60 minutes of his second consecutive horrid outing. One game after being yanked against St. Louis after allowing four goals on 18 shots in 24:33, he allowed six goals on 27 shots against the Avs.
“We can’t even get Connor Beaupre up here,” Foligno said sarcastically, regarding the Wild’s longtime emergency goalie and son of former North Stars goalie Don Beaupre. “It’s just one of those things where it is what it is. You gotta laugh about it, shake it off and just move on and just play with the guys we got.
“But you know what? We’ve got a lot of quality guys in here that know how to play the game, and hopefully we can survive until those guys come back.”
Still, you won’t catch John Hynes crying, “Woe is me!”
In fact, he had a measured reaction to the way the Wild played against the Avs. He pointed out the scoring chances were about even and the Wild were never under siege despite missing so many key players. It was just a case of the Avs’ chances going in and the Wild not converting on theirs.
And while you might think he’s delusional, the analytics kinda sorta back him up. According to Natural Stat Trick, the scoring chances at five-on-five were 21-16 in favor of the Avs. High-danger chances were 12-6, but when MoneyPuck pumps all the data from the game into their Deserve To Win O’Meter, the Wild actually wouldn’t have won Thursday’s game 68.3 percent of the time after 1,000 game simulations.
Yes, they were off offensively. Marcus Johansson blew chances left and right. Matt Boldy (minus-4) turned pucks over left and right and couldn’t catch a pass. Marco Rossi, Mats Zuccarello and Ryan Hartman were each minus-3. Some of their defensemen, especially Jake Middleton, had a difficult night to say the least.
But in the end, the numbers show Gustavsson wasn’t good. He allowed minus-4.1 goals above expected.
“It was just terrible,” Gustavsson said. “We had a tough start, and then just nothing worked. Pucks went through. Only thing that was good today was probably the PK.”
And for him personally? “Well, two bad games in a row now and we just have to play better next game.”
Middleton, playing his second game since breaking his finger gruesomely last month, took a swan dive on the knife for being on the ice for five goals, calling his play “dog—-” and “unacceptable.”
He said it was still a special night for his parents in town to see him square off against his younger brother, Keaton, for the first time, but, “I am going to have a little sour taste in my mouth for a while, especially if they hang that gamesheet up.”
But he wasn’t alone. It was a tough night for Zach Bogosian, Jon Merrill and Declan Chisholm, who gifted Ross Colton the eventual winning goal after what should have been a momentum-building penalty kill.
David Jiricek was one of the few Wild defensemen to play well against the Avalanche. (Nick Wosika / Imagn Images)
One positive part of Thursday’s game was Jiricek, who wasn’t on for a goal against in 16:01 of ice time. He had a shot, attempted three others and had three hits. He was charted with four giveaways, but he was hardly the only guilty party.
“There are times in the game where he caught your attention, where you’re like, ‘OK, I see a nice play, a puck move or pass,’” Hynes said. “You see the size. I thought he competed hard.”
Jiricek, after what had to be a hard game to debut in, said, “I’m so excited and blessed for the opportunity from the Minnesota organization. That was the first one and I hope it wasn’t the last one.”
Avs defenseman Josh Manson said the Avs were made very aware the Wild were without three top defensemen and were instructed to pressure their blue liners.
“They’re banged up over there,” Manson said. “That’s not their full team.”
The Wild will hit the road, where they’re 15-3-3, Friday for back-to-back games against San Jose and Vegas. Hynes didn’t have an update on whether Faber, Brodin or Kaprizov will travel.
Not that he’s a doc, but Foligno sure didn’t expect them back, saying, “We gotta play without those guys for a little bit longer, so next man up has to be the mentality.”
“That’s why this game’s so great,” he said. “You got to be able to do it and character wins. … The underdog story, I think that’s what we’re going to have to live with for a while now.”
Hynes said he’d be worried if the Wild were dominated Thursday. He knows the score doesn’t indicate they weren’t, but he says they just have to clean up the mistakes that ended up in their net. He’s confident the Wild can continue to win games despite their injury situation.
Of course, as a coach, what choice does he have other than to say that? He’s done an impressive job all season getting the team ready to move on from losses. Heck, they didn’t even lose consecutive games in regulation until Games 31 and 32.
His job is to get this team that knows how understaffed it is right now to believe they can win games without Kaprizov, Faber, Brodin and Spurgeon.
Otherwise, they might have no choice but to sacrifice that goat because the cap situation is a total mess.
When you’re so tight against the cap, you quickly learn short-term injuries mess you up way more than long-term ones. In fact, the Wild are dangerously close to having to play a man short for a game just to be able to call up players freely.
Still, Hynes said, “The guys we have in the lineup, like, these guys can play. Like, we got good NHL players. We got a good team. We got good structure. We believe in how we play. Tonight didn’t go our way. If we got totally dominated in the game, I would probably have different answers for you.
“I like the challenge, but to be very honest with you, I have so much confidence in the players. I feel like, yes, we have guys out of the lineup. The commitment level that we played with is good. Tonight they scored on chances they got. I don’t think there was a lot of Grade As. I think if we play that game and the puck bounces a different way for either team, it might be a different result. That’s the reality. We’ll just move forward with it.”
(Top photo of Filip Gustavsson: Nick Wosika / Imagn Images)
