ST. PAUL — Matt Boldy finally got rewarded Tuesday night.
The Wild’s 22-year-old budding star has been struggling so far this season. Boldy had a goal and assist in his first two games this season but then suffered an injury that kept him out of the lineup for the second half of October.
Entering Tuesday night’s game, since his return from injury, Boldy had zero goals and six assists in his past 10 games. That included five games without a point. He hadn’t scored since Oct. 14 in Toronto, the second game of the season.
While Boldy has nine points in 13 games, the Wild need more goals and offense from their second highest paid forward.
“Put money aside, put contracts aside, this is a 22-year-old kid, and we’re asking a lot out of him,” Wild President of Hockey Operations and General Manager Bill Guerin said Tuesday morning during John Hynes’ introductory news conference.
“He knows he’s struggling more than anybody else, more than any experts out there. And I guarantee the experts that are out there have never been through something like this.
“This is weighing on him like a ton of bricks. And it’s our job to help him get out of it. We’re not there to beat him up and point fingers at him or anything. We’ve got to help him out of it.”
If the Wild are to turn their season around, they need Boldy to build on his strong performance in their 3-1 win over the Blues Tuesday night.
Boldy had four shots, eight shot attempts and led the Wild with .67 individual expected goals. With Boldy on the ice, the Wild controlled 77.42 percent of the shot attempt share and 87.64 percent of the expected goal share.
“The way that Matt played tonight,” Hynes said, “he (had) an impact on the game in a lot of positive ways and then he wound up scoring the goal. Those are the things that need to happen.”
As of late, Boldy has been looking more like himself — the player who scored 31 goals and 63 points in 81 games last season. But he hasn’t been rewarded…until Tuesday when he beat Jordan Binnington high glove from the slot on a breakaway after a stretch pass from Jonas Brodin.
You could see the relief on Boldy’s face.
“It’s been a long time coming,” he said.
Boldy will look to build on his performance Thursday against the Nashville Predators and Sunday against the Chicago Blackhawks.
All data via Natural Stat Trick