The Minnesota Wild were back home Thursday evening, Nov. 14, against the Montréal Canadiens after having three games on the road in the past week. They had a quick back-to-back Thursday, Nov. 7, against the San Jose Sharks and Friday, Nov. 8, against the Anaheim Ducks. They then swung up to Chicago to face the Chicago Blackhawks and on Sunday, Nov. 10 to finish the road trip. They went 2-1-0 on their road trip, with their loss coming in overtime against the Blackhawks.
They were looking to redeem themselves after that disappointing loss and they were without one of their top defensemen in Jonas Brodin who is listed as day-to-day with an upper body injury. The Wild were able to pull out a win despite losing two more players in the process. It wasn’t an outstanding performance but they kept their heads down and got things done despite the odds against them. We’ll start this article by taking a look at the injuries they faced.
Wild Face Injuries
The Wild are no strangers to injuries, but this season, they’ve been pretty lucky with a few minor injuries here and there. Joel Eriksson Ek missed two games with a broken nose but likely wouldn’t have missed any time if the doctors had allowed it. The one major injury so far was Jared Spurgeon, who missed six games earlier in the season due to a lower-body injury that hadn’t fully healed from the previous season.
Fast-forward to this season and Wild fans will probably feel like deja vu as Brodin has hit the injured list. For those who may not remember, he was bothered by injuries last season and missed 20 games. As of now, Brodin is listed as day-to-day, and hopefully, he’ll be back for good much faster than last season, but it was clear they missed him against the Canadiens, and he wasn’t the only one.
They didn’t even make it through the first period before losing not only Mats Zuccarello, who took a Brock Faber shot to the groin area, but also Eriksson Ek. It was unclear how Eriksson Ek’s injury happened, but something went wrong as he didn’t return to the game.
The Wild struggled a bit to find their game and dropped to 10 forwards, but they continued to play their style and eventually found the back of the net. That first goal gave them the boost they needed to continue to play strong and pull out the win despite being down two of their best forwards.
Wild’s Boldy & Rossi Step Up
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