Game preview: Wild wrap up road trip in Montreal, Fleury gets first start

The Minnesota Wild play the Montreal Canadiens tonight inside Centre Bell arena as they wrap up their first road trip of the season. The Canadiens enter the game unbeaten in regulation with a 1-0-1 record. 

Marc-Andre Fleury will start his first game of the season tonight after Filip Gustavsson started in both the Wild's 2-0 shutout win over the Florida Panthers last Thursday, and the Wild's 7-4 loss to the Toronto Maple Leafs on Saturday. Tonight very well could be Fleury's last game in Montreal. Dylan Loucks has more on Fleury below:

The injuries keep piling up this month for the Wild, who suffered a massive blow before the season when captain and top-pair defenseman Jared Spurgeon got injured in a preseason game on Oct. 5 against the Chicago Blackhawks. Spurgeon remains out of the lineup and is listed as week-to-week. He's not expected back until later this month.

To make matters worse, the Wild are now without one of their top forwards in Matt Boldy, who was injured in Minnesota's loss to the Toronto Maple Leafs on Saturday night. Boldy joins Spurgeon with a week-to-week status. 

Fortunately for the Wild, like Spurgeon, Boldy isn't being placed on injured reserve, which requires a player to be out 10 games and 24 days.

“It’s tough, obviously,” head coach Dean Evason told the media on Monday. "But, you know, happens to every team. We need to step up in both him and Spurgy’s absence obviously. It will be a really good test for us.”

But the Wild's test on Tuesday night without their top defenseman in Spurgeon and 30-goal scorer in Boldy just got more difficult as Minnesota will now also play without defenseman Alex Goligoski, the team announced on Tuesday morning. The Wild will now play shorthanded tonight with 11 forwards and six defensemen. 

It will be a test for the Wild indeed, and an opportunity for Dakota Mermis, who will take Goligoski's spot on the third pair alongside Jon Merrill. Mermis is a +7 in 27 career NHL games between Minnesota, New Jersey and Arizona. Seven of those appearances have been with the Wild over the past three seasons.

The plan for tonight, Evason said on Monday, is to leave Boldy's spot open since the third and fourth lines have gelled and produced so well. The Wild saw contributions from both lines in the first two games with both Marco Rossi and Brandon Duhaime scoring goals on Saturday against Toronto.

"You got some juggling obviously. You've got to be a little sharper and communicate really well on the bench because you're going to have guys flipping in and out and doubling up," Evason told reporters on Tuesday.

"It's a challenge to not, you know, like would we want to double up Kirill Kaprizov every single shift? Sure, but you got to be careful not to exhaust him early, and so it's a challenge to put the right people into situations.

So our thought process is we put a defensive guy if it's a defensive zone faceoff and then offensive is offensive zone faceoff. So we've got a bit of a plan, but then it fluctuates as the game goes on. But we've all juggled like that before, so it shouldn't be anything too out of the normal."

Kirill Kaprizov-Ryan Hartman-Mats Zuccarello

Marcus Johansson-Joel Eriksson Ek-

Marcus Foligno-Marco Rossi-Freddy Gaudreau

Pat Maroon-Connor Dewar-Brandon Duhaime

Defense pairs:

Jonas Brodin-Calen Addison

Jake Middleton-Brock Faber

Jon Merrill-Dakota Mermis

Starting goaltender: Marc-Andre Fleury

According to The Athletic's Arpon Basu, Montreal head coach Martin St. Louis told reporters that lines will be revealed in warmups tonight.

Here is the Canadiens' lineup from last game against the Chicago Blackhawks, but Montreal will be without Kirby Dach, who has suffered a long-term, potentially season-ending injury, according to Sportsnet's Eric Engels.

According to Basu, Sam Montembeault will get the start in goal tonight against the Wild as the Canadiens look to improve to 2-1 and stay unbeaten in regulation.