The Minnesota Wild’s injury report seems to grow by the day.
But they just keep on winning.
The Wild, who are scheduled to play the Seattle Kraken on Thursday night in St. Paul, Minn., were already without forwards Jordan Greenway (upper body), Marcus Foligno (upper body) and Ryan Hartman (upper body) before Brandon Duhaime left during the second period of Tuesday’s 4-1 victory against visiting Montreal with an upper-body injury.
Coach Dean Evason’s postgame evaluation of Duhaime’s injury was a succinct “it’s not good.”
Mason Shaw scored his second career goal in as many games and fellow rookie Marco Rossi earned his first NHL point with an assist on Kirill Kaprizov’s second goal of the night.
“It’s not tough. It’s exciting because you get to put people in opportunities to be successful,” Evason said of the youngsters in the lineup. “They all want to play, so you get an opportunity to place a guy in a spot that he wants and he’s hungry for.
“Clearly, we don’t want injuries. We’d like to have everybody healthy, but it happens. It’s a physical game, so it’s going to happen. Yeah, it’s exciting for us as an organization to see the progress, the development and the depth of our organization.”
Matt Boldy had a goal and an assist, Joel Eriksson Ek had two assists and Marc-Andre Fleury made 34 saves for the Wild, who have won two in a row and are 5-1-1 since opening the season with three consecutive defeats.
Fleury has allowed seven goals in winning four straight starts after allowing 11 goals in the first two games.
“A few in a row I feel like you get your momentum a bit,” Fleury said. “The confidence has been going all right.”
The Kraken got a confidence boost with a 5-4 victory Tuesday in Calgary as they rallied from a two-goal deficit in the third period.
Rookie Matty Beniers netted the winner after Daniel Sprong scored on the power play and Yanni Gourde tallied on a short-handed breakaway. All three goals came in a five-minute span.
“We’ve got so much more confidence in this group,” Gourde said. “Last year was last year. We know we can rally back and we know we have the skills to do it. It’s a matter of just putting one shift together and then the next line is up. You just tilt the ice a little bit.”
The Kraken’s rally came after Calgary scored twice in a 17-second span early in the third to break a 2-2 tie.
“We probably would’ve liked to not give up two goals. I think we took a timeout and we kind of banded back together and were like ‘all right we’ve got this, lets calm down, it’s not over yet, we’ve got 18 minutes left,'” said Beniers, who extended his points streak to five games (four goals, one assist). “Slowly but surely, we got one, and then ‘Gourdo’ made a great play on the PK (and) got another one and we were able to finish it. It was good.”
Goaltender Joey Daccord, making his first appearance of the season with Philipp Grubauer out with a lower-body injury and Martin Jones away from the team for personal reasons, made 36 saves.
“Just finding timely plays and sticking with things, that’s how you come out of these types of games with two points,” Kraken coach Dave Hakstol said.
–Field Level Media
