The Minnesota Wild played host to the Calgary Flames on Saturday evening, Jan. 25 to end Hockey Day Minnesota. They were looking to avenge a rough 4-0 loss to the Utah Hockey Club on Thursday, Jan. 23. Their lineup remained the same as Thursday with one minor change to the goaltending as Marc-André Fleury got the start with Filip Gustavsson being the back-up.
The game started in favor of the Flames, and they held control throughout the game. The Wild did mount a small comeback towards the end but couldn’t find a way to tie the game and the Flames took the win. In this article we’ll take a look at what went wrong for the Wild starting with their efforts.
Wild’s Effort Too Late
Despite the Flames scoring the first goal of the game, the Wild didn’t back down. Instead, they continued to fight back. The effort looked strong compared to their previous outing against Utah, and they managed to tie the game before the period ended. However, in the second, they let off the gas, and the Flames pushed ahead. It still wasn’t too bad, but it was clear the Wild were struggling against themselves.
They were throwing the puck away and not being aggressive, and for some reason, this seems to only be happening on their home ice. They did find the effort again late in the the third when they scored two goals within a minute of each other but they couldn’t get that final push where they used to do so well with an empty net.
“I mean yeah, but it doesn’t really matter when we don’t play 60 minutes…” said Jakub Lauko about the effort at the end of the game, and he continued about going on the road, “We need to start winning games at home, especially against teams from our conference and our division, so that’s something we need to start working on from tomorrow and just get it going again.”
Wild’s Penalty Kill Off the Rails
It is crazy how good this penalty kill has been this season to how bad it’s also been. Every team struggles in special teams throughout the season, but the Wild’s has gone from being perfect to not being able to stop anything on the penalty kill.
Another reason it seems so bad when it likely isn’t as horrible as it seems, is because everyone has seen what this team is capable of and now that they’re getting back to a mostly healthy lineup, it’s even more frustrating they can’t make these things happen. They’re still a good team in a struggling spot that all teams go…
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