The Minnesota Wild had one of those “measuring stick” games last night as they took on possibly the best team in the league in the Florida Panthers who were undefeated at home (9-0) and 12-2-3 (W-L-OTL) which makes them 3-2-3 on the road so far this season with 27 points.

The Minnesota Wild were 11-5-0 (22 points) and were leading the Central Division by virtue of a tiebreaker with the Winnipeg Jets because they have more regulation or overtime wins (ROW) than Winnipeg.

Former Minnesota Wild player and coach, Andruw Brunette is the interim coach after Joel Quenneville was relieved of his duties earlier this season.

The only other connections we can think of are Nick Bjugstad  & Kyle Rau, who were both drafted by the Florida Panthers, Bjugstad in the 1st round in 2010 & Rau in the 3rd round in 2011. Neither of them were in the lineup. Bjugstad was a scratch & Rau is with their minor-league affiliate, the Iowa Wild.

The Florida Panthers aren’t that different from the Wild as they made a long unexpected playoff run in their 1st playoff appearance in their 3rd year of existence and since then, they haven’t been able to get past the 1st round in 6 playoff appearances in the last 24 seasons, including 4 in their last 10 seasons.

The Wild, of course, also made a long unexpected playoff run in their 3rd season but it ended in the Conference Finals. They’ve made the playoffs in 11 of their 20 seasons, including 8 of their last 9 seasons but they’ve only got past the 1st round 3 times and twice in those last 9 seasons.

Both teams are headed in the right direction, that’s for sure, but the Panthers are probably a little ahead of the Wild at this point.

Here’s how the teams lined up:

Minnesota Wild

Same as the lines vs Dallas in the last game:
Fiala-Hartman-Zuccarello
Greenway-Eriksson Ek-Foligno
Kaprizov-Rask-Gaudreau
Duhaime-Sturm-Pitlick

Goligoski-Spurgeon
Brodin-Dumba
Merrill-Kulikov

Cam Talbot
Kaapo Kähkönen

Florida Panthers

We couldn’t find a lineup
Here is who started the game:

Game Recap

The Panthers were undefeated at home for a reason. They have a team that is ready to contend for a championship. They have a lot of veteran players and are coached well so they saw the Wild on the schedule and knew they were leading the Central Division so they weren’t going to take them likely so they brought a very physical & energized effort right from the drop of the puck.

The Panthers outshot the Wild 15-5 in a dominant 1st period but they only scored 1 goal on a tremendous play by D Aaron Ekblad, who was leading the rush and tried to split the D. Minnesota Wild D Jon Merrill made a pretty good physical play to knock him down but Merrill’s partner, Dmitry Kulikov was to Merrill’s right and Panthers F Owen Tippett was trailing the play a little bit to the left of Merrill. Somehow, as he was falling down, Ekblad was still able to get the toe of the blade of his stick on the puck and drag it back & towards Tippett who corralled it on his backhand then made a deke to his forehand before going back to his backhand to flip it just over Minnesota Wild G Cam Talbot’s pad. 1-0 Panthers

It was an amazing play by Ekblad but with Merrill knowing he had his partner to his right and an opposing forward driving to his left, he probably should’ve played it differently and tried to play the puck instead of the body.* Minnesota Wild F Nico Sturm was backchecking on the play and slowed down to find a trailer since he could see it was 2-on-2. Merrill’s physical play took Kulikov out of the play as it looks like he could’ve made a play on Ekblad.
*See the Game Notes at the bottom of the article.

The Wild weathered the Florida storm and played much better in the final 2 periods, outshooting Florida, 36 to 22 but the Wild lost D Jared Spurgeon early in the 1st, forcing them to play with just 5 defensemen the rest of the way. The physical play and resilience of both teams were on display for the whole game as neither team was going to back down.

The Wild gave up a 2-on-1 when Dmitry Kulikov decided to try to keep the puck in the zone & played the body of Panthers F Joe Thornton but Thornton took a hit to make a play by getting the puck over to Frank Vetrano to start a 2-on-1 and he just ended keeping the puck but made a head fake like he was going to move the puck and then fired a wicked wrister to the upper left corner. 2-0 Panthers

The Wild responded 3:23 later with a power-play goal on a great pass by Mats Zuccarello to Joel Eriksson Ek who had to battle Aaron Ekblad to get his stick in a position to tip in his 7th goal of the season. 

Unfortunately, the Panthers responded 3 minutes later when Vatrano scored his 2nd of the night after Cam Talbot made the save on a point shot but didn’t know where the puck was and Vatrano found it for an easy goal.

That meant they were going into the 3rd down 3-1 which, if you’ve followed the Wild this year, you know that doesn’t really matter. They’ve come back in a lot of games so far including tying one game with 2.2 seconds left so we knew a push was coming from them but this had already looked like the best team the Wild had faced this season so that made it a monumental task. To add to how difficult it might be to come back against the Florida Panthers, they had won 7 of their 9 home games prior to last night by more than one goal and 6 of those games were won by more than 2 goals. The other 2 wins were in overtime so not only have they won all of their home games but they’ve won the majority of them in convincing fashion.

That wasn’t going to stop this Minnesota Wild team from leaving everything on the ice in the 3rd period and it took just under 2 minutes into the 3rd for the Wild to get back within 1 when Kirill Kaprizov got a great pass from Frédérick Gaudreau to send him on a mini-breakaway and he fired it past Panthers G Sergei “Bob” Bobrovsky. Obviously, it takes both players to connect on a play that ends up in a breakaway and Kaprizov trusted Gaudreau would read what he was doing to make it happen. 3-2 Panthers

4 minutes later, the Panthers got their 2-goal lead back when Carter Verhaeghe scored a crazy goal with a great individual effort He chipped the puck into the offensive zone then skated past Wild D Dmitry Kulikov to get the puck back and cut to the middle of the ice. He still had Wild D Jon Merrill in front of the net and Kulikov all over him and he was still able to make somewhat of a chip shot to the upper right corner to beat Cam Talbot. 4-2 Panthers

The Wild pulled their goalie with 5:15 remaining in regulation since they were down by 2 goals. They weren’t getting much done until 52 seconds remained and Matt Dumba barely held the puck in the offensive zone & passed to Victor Rask at the right half-wall. Rask sent the puck to the center of the ice. It looks like he was trying to pass it to Gaudreau but it went off of Mackenzie Weegar’s stick and deflected to Alex Goligoski but he was facing center ice so he did a quick turnaround shot on net and Marcus Foligno got his stick on it to help the puck somehow get past Bobrovsky & make it a 4-3 game with 46 seconds left in regulation.

The Wild won the ensuing faceoff and Kevin Fiala playing at right defense tried to quickly get the puck to the red line so he could dump it in to the Panthers zone & the Wild could get in on the forecheck but Panthers F Jonahtan Huberdeau poked it free & it went to Fiala’s skates but it went off his skates & to the boards. Fiala got to it first and he tried to dump it in with his backhand but it hit the linesman and got past Fiala so Huberdeau got it & passed it to Sam Bennett and he was able to get past Wild F Ryan Hartman’s poke check and fire it on the empty net and just like that, Florida led by 2 goals again! WOW!!! How about that?

36.4 seconds left!

That was probably the nail in the coffiin but the Wild have taught their fans to watch the game until the final buzzer, right?

The Wild wrapped the puck around the left boards to the right corner with 16.9 seconds left. Panthers D Gustav Forsling got to it and threw it up the right boards & it either hit F Frank Vatrano or he stopped it and Kirill Kaprizov was on him and chopped at the puck to send it back in the zone where Joel Eriksson Ek was coming up the boards & he got the puck, made a quick move around Vatrano & cut towards the center of the at & fired a shot from the blue line. Ryan Hartman headed to the net when he saw Ek get the puck and he got his stick on it to tip it in with 8.6 seconds left and it was a 1-goal game again! THIS IS NUTS!!!

8.6 seconds left!

Of course, 8.6 seconds still made us think it’s impossible but the Wild won the faceoff again and Kaprizov got it and quickly shot it on net. Was he hoping Bobrovsky would freeze the puck or was he trying to score? It doesn’t matter much because the puck was frozen with…

3.4 seconds left!

It took 4 tries to get drop the puck as the inside wingers were both trying to get a jump on it to get to it as quickly as possible to have a chance. After the 3rd try, the linesman at the blue line threw Eriksson Ek out of the faceoff so it was up to Mats Zuccarello to win the faceoff to give the Wild a chance.

The puck ended up basically staying in the faceoff dot but Ryan Hartman got it to & sent it back to Brodin who was at the top of the circle & he quickly sent it to Fiala for a one-timer slapshot that Bobrovsky caught and threw into the corner to end the game.

See the highlight at the 9:00 mark of the video below:

Game Notes

*It’s a lot easier to talk about defense than it is to actually play it and make split second decisions with a player coming at you with a lot of speed so I wonder if teams go over a play like the Aaron Ekblad goal and try to talk out if it could be played differently.

Another part of this play that’s strange is that Nico Sturm played the backcheck as well you’d probably want him to play it. He slowed down to make sure a trailing opponent wouldn’t be open for a pass. How is he supposed to know it will play out like it did? Should he watch the play then make a decision? It might be too late then.

Do they just say, hey, this was a great game where both teams just battled for the whole 60 minutes and move on? We’d think they’d at least talk about it. 

**Victor Rask was back in the lineup because, well, Wild Coach Dean Evason put him back between Kaprizov & Zuccarello against Dallas for a few shifts and they scored 3 goals.

It’s sad how many fans rip on Victor Rask and don’t want him in the lineup or part of this Wild team. He worked his butt off because that’s what he was asked to do and we find it extremely hard to believe there are any professional hockey players that don’t want to get better and help their team. Well, Victor Rask put in the work and he has some skills or he wouldn’t be in the National Hockey League and, if the head coach and the front office of the Minnesota Wild believe in him, maybe everyone should give him a chance.

***After watching this game, it definitely looks like the Florida Panthers are ready to contend for the Stanley Cup. They were physical. They have a ton of talent and they look like they’re all on the same page, too.

Nico Sturm said:

“In my 2 1/2 years, I think that was the fastest pace that I’ve seen. I think this is as good as it gets, and they have Barkov missing, too. That’s a good hockey team, but we were right there with them. That was a winnable game; we made some costly turnovers, gave up too many odd-man rushes, and they’ve got a forward group that will punish you for it.”

The Wild could be where they are in a year or two, especially if Marco Rossi, Matt Boldy, Adam Beckman and Calen Addison develop well & quickly.

• Marco Rossi is up to 14 points (3G, 11A) in 10 games after a 3 assist game (Playmaker) on Friday night in a 5-0 home win against Tucson.
• Matt Boldy had 2 goals and an assist in his first game of the season.
• Adam Beckman has 8 points (3G, 5A) in 8 games.
• Calen Addison has 6 assists in 10 games & he’s a +4
• Don’t sleep on that Nick Swaney guy, either! He has 7 goals & 5 assists in 12 games including 1 Power-Play goal & 1 Short-Handed goal.

Postgame

Jonas Brodin Postgame Interview

Kevin Fiala Postgame Interview

Minnesota Wild Head Coach Dean Evason Postgame Interview

🏒–– CP ––🏒

Next up: 

The Reigning 2-Time Stanley Cup Champion Tampa Bay Lightning Sunday at 4pm on Bally Sports North.

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