The Minnesota Wild (34-28-9) continue their six-game homestand tonight versus the San Jose Sharks (16-47-8) ahead of Saturday's must-win game against the eighth-place Vegas Golden Knights.
The Wild haven't played since Saturday, a 5-4 overtime loss to the St. Louis Blues, and had Sunday and Monday off with practice on Tuesday and Wednesday. Wild coach John Hynes emphasized how beneficial having two days off (and four days off from game action) is for the team mentally this late in the season.
“The truth is really sometimes that one day you have off, you're not fully recovered,” Hynes told reporters after Monday's practice. “But I think the bigger part of it when you have two (days off) is the mental part, where you can get away from it a little bit.”
The Wild won their first meeting (a 4-3 victory on March 3) against the Sharks this season and face them once more on April 13. San Jose is 1-9-3 this month and has lost eight games in a row.
The Wild enter tonight's game nine points behind the Golden Knights but have an opportunity to gain some confidence before Saturday's contest with a game against a struggling Sharks team that currently sits last in the NHL.
“We've really talked with them about not trying to get too high or too low,” Hynes said Monday after two days off.
“We can't do anything about what was going on (in the standings). My message to them was enjoy the two days.”
Math is not on the Wild's side right now, and their record from here on out must be near perfect to make the playoffs for a fifth straight season and 11th time in the past 12 years. To make matters worse, this is a three-team race right now with the Blues sandwiched between the Golden Knights and Wild, which is what makes Minnesota's 0-3 record this month against St. Louis so costly.
The good news for the Wild is that they get a huge lineup boost tonight with the return of Joel Eriksson Ek and Jonas Brodin, who both practiced with the team on Tuesday and Wednesday. The Wild went 2-1-2 without Eriksson Ek and lost the past two games without Brodin.
“Neither guy is the flashiest player,” Wild coach John Hynes told reporters after practice on Monday, “but I think if you really dig into what they bring to a team the roles that they fill, the situations that they play in, the consistency that they play with, to me, they're two excellent players not only for the Minnesota Wild, but I think throughout the league.”
* Update: Marcus Foligno will not play tonight, according to The Athletic's Michael Russo.
Wild projected lines
Kaprizov — Eriksson Ek — Boldy
Zuccarello — Rossi — Hartman
Johansson — Khusnutdinov — Gaudreau
Beckman — Lucchini — Lettieri
Defensive pairs:
Middleton — Faber
Brodin — Bogosian
Merrill — Chisholm
Projected starter: Gustavsson
Scratches: Shaw, Mermis and Goligoski
Injured: Foligno and Spurgeon
Sharks projected lines
Klim Kostin — Mikael Granlund — Fabian Zetterlund
William Eklund — Luke Kunin — Justin Bailey
Thomas Bordeleau — Nico Sturm — Mike Hoffman
Kevin Labanc — Ryan Carpenter — Filip Zadina
Defensive pairs:
Mario Ferraro — Kyle Burroughs
Henry Thrun — Jan Rutta
Marc-Edouard Vlasic — Calen Addison
Projected starter: Mackenzie Blackwood
Scratches: Givani Smith, Jacob MacDonald
Injured: Logan Couture, Oskar Lindblom, Matt Benning and Vitek Vanecek
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