First game under John Hynes: Wild vs Blues
It has been a pretty eventful morning here in the State of Hockey. Yesterday, Wild president of Hockey Operations and General Manager Bill Guerin announced the team has moved on from head coach Dean Evason and assistant coach Bob Woods.
Guerin followed that up with the hiring of John Hynes who will now be the seventh coach in Wild history.
Ryan Hartman also has been suspended for two games for slew-footing Alex DeBrincat in Detroit on Sunday so Vinni Lettieri has been recalled by the Wild from Iowa and will play tonight with Brandon Duhaime and Connor Dewar.
With the releasing of Woods, the Wild have brought up Patrick Dwyer from the Iowa Wild to run Minnesota's penalty kill and defense group.
Even after all that happened in the last day, the Wild will host the St. Louis Blues tonight and are hoping to end their seven game losing streak which is the longest in franchise history.
Although this is Hynes' first game as the Wild's head coach, he doesn't plan on making any major changes yet. He will keep everybody in their usual roles and keep the systems the same.
After the game tomorrow, Hynes will incorporate tweaks to systems and lineup moves and really take over as the head coach. So tonight will be the same Wild lineup but likely more motivated Wild players.
Wild Projected Lineup
Kaprizov - Rossi - Zuccarello
Johansson - Eriksson Ek - Boldy
Foligno - Gaudreau - Maroon
Duhaime - Dewar - Lettieri
Defense Pairs:
Brodin - Faber
Middleton - Spurgeon
Goligoski - Bogosain
Starting Goaltender: Filip Gustavsson
Blues Projected Lineup
Pavel Buchnevich - Robert Thomas - Jake Neighbours
Brandon Saad - Kevin Hayes - Jordan Kyrou
Jakub Vrana - Brayden Schenn - Kasperi Kapanen
Alexei Toropchenko - Oskar Sundqvist - Sammy Blais
Defense Pairs:
Nick Leddy - Colton Parayko
Torey Krug - Justin Faulk
Marco Scandella - Tyler Tucker
Starting Goaltender: Jordan Binnington
Predictions
Aaron: 5-3 St. Louis
Dylan: 6-1 Minnesota
