The Minnesota Wild have been dealing with Covid-19 & Injuries early in the season. It’s not great but it might be better to be dealing with it now, rather than later in the season.

They placed F Jordan Greenway on Injured Reserve (IR) with a lower-body injury after he took a hit from Seattle Kraken D Mark Giordano and struggled to get off the ice in the 3rd period.

The Minnesota Wild recalled F Adam Beckman from the Iowa Wild to replace Greenway and he made his NHL debut in tonight’s game. Safe to say he’s a Mile High in more ways than one as it’s hard to imagine what it feels like to reach the best league in the world and play your first game. Were there nerves? Was it going to take a shift or two for him to get used to the speed of the NHL game?

The Wild also recalled D Calen Addison & sent D Jon Lizotte down to Iowa because D Alex Goligoski is out for 1-2 weeks with an upper-body injury and Dmitry Kulikov was day-to-day with a lower-body injury. Kulikov was good to go and played opposite Captain Jared Spurgeon tonight which meant Addison would play on the bottom pair opposite Jon Merrill.

It was also reported that both F Mats Zuccarello & F Rem Pitlick were confirmed to be Covid-19 positive so they will both be out at least 10 days (starting from the day they were put on the NHL’s COVID-19 Protocol List.)

Here’s how the teams lined up in Colorado:

Minnesota Wild

97 Kirill Kaprizov – 14 Joel Eriksson Ek – 17 Marcus Foligno
22 Kevin Fiala – 89 Frédérick Gaudreau – 38 Ryan Hartman
21 Brandon Duhaime – 7 Nico Sturm – 27 Nick Bjugstad
53 Adam Beckman* – 52 Connor Dewar – 37 Kyle Rau

29 Dmitry Kulikov – 46 Jared Spurgeon
25 Jonas Brodin – 24 Matt Dumba
4 Jon Merrill – 59 Calen Addison

Cam Talbot
Kaapo Kähkönen
*NHL Debut

Scratched/Out:
F Victor Rask, F Mats Zuccarello (Covid-19 Protocols), F Rem Pitlick (Covid-19 Protocols), F Jordan Greenway (IR-LBI), D Alex Goligoski (IR-UBI)

Colorado Avalanche

1st Period Recap

Minnesota Wild F Kirill Kaprizov, who has yet to score a goal this season, got his hair cut so maybe we should expect a faster Kap so I predicted a breakaway goal from him for the 1st goal of the game (#mnwildFirst)!

Adam Beckman got a shot, the Wild’s 1st shot of the game, in his 1st shift of the game just 3:00 in. 

Kaprizov had 2 shot attempts early and was also cross-checked by Nazem Kadri to knock him down and take the puck but that was apparently not a penalty.

Well, it wasn’t the first goal of the game for Kaprizov as Colorado Avalanche F Gabriel Landeskog scored when he skated through the offensive zone past pretty much every Wild player and received a pass from Andrei Burakovsky on a line rush against the Wild’s bottom line & bottom defensive pair. It was not long after the Wild got a great shift from the Fiala, Sturm & Hartman line. Kap could still score the Wild’s 1st goal of the game, though.

That goal really energized the Avalanche as goals usually do but they dominated the next couple of minutes before Wild G Cam Talbot made a save to send the game to a commercial timeout. During that sequence, Calen Addison took a stick up high but it looked like it was friendly fire from his defense partner, Jon Merrill.

Avalanche F Nathan MacKinnon then drew a holding penalty on Wild D Dmitry Kulikov. The Wild killed off the power play, though.

The Avalanche then dominated the rest of the period so the Wild would try to regroup in the 1st intermission.

2nd Period Recap

Early in the period, Wild rookie F Adam Beckman, who is known for scoring goals (97 goals in 152 WHL games, 4 in 13 AHL games), got the puck on the left side of the net (COL G Darcy Kuemper’s right) and he wasn’t facing the net but he just turned & took a shot. It created a small scoring chance.* 

Colorado D Cale Makar came in for a hit on Brandon Duhaime and, on first look made it look a little high or a little higher than it needed to be but, on the second look (replay), Makar could’ve hit him a lot worse and he actually could’ve hit him with his left side but he turned to his right side so he would hit him more from the front than the side. 

Stick tap to Hockey Wilderness for the video/s

Just over 14 minutes into the 2nd period. Wild D Matt Dumba started a rush &, with the puck dumped in, he saw F Gabriel Landeskog going to get the puck so he lined him up and hit him with a good, physical hit. Landeskog didn’t like it so he shoved Dumba’s head into the boards and got called for roughing** The Wild’s power play got plenty of chance then drew another penalty and scored to tie the game on a great pass from Marcus Foligno out front to Ryan Hartman for a one-timer for the slot that beat Kuemper to the blocker side to tie this game at 1!

Unfortunately, on the very next shift, Nathan MacKinnon forced a turnover (or won a battle for the puck) and it ended up on D Erik Johnson’s stick and he scored just 40 seconds after the Wild tied it at 1 & the Avalanche were right back up by 1 goal at 2-1.

3rd Period Recap

2:24 into the period, Wild F Brandon Duhaime cross-checked Avalanche D Bowen Byram from behind about 5 feet from the boards. It’s a dangerous hit but is it a major? We think it’s questionable but the league wants that kind of hit out of the game. Afterwards, Avs F Nathan MacKinnon skates over to Duhaime, says something & they both drop the gloves and throw some punches.

The officials called it a major right away then reviewed it and kept it as a major. Then, they give each 2 minutes for roughing instead of fighting and MacKinnon didn’t get an instigator for some reason.*** Why? The major already changes the game. That’s on Duhaime but he then had to leave the ice because the major came with a game misconduct so, he was done for the night. An instigator penalty comes with a 5-minute major for fighting & a 10-minute misconduct but, of course, the officials didn’t call an instigator or fighting. If they had, MacKinnon wouldn’t have been back until there was only 36 seconds left in the 3rd period.

Is this a fight?
from Spoked Z

The Avalanche scored 29 seconds into the 5-minute Power Play to make it 3-1 but the Wild killed off the rest of that penalty which also included 68 seconds of a 2-man advantage then 52 more seconds of power play time.

It looks like they missed another penalty when Gabriel Landeskog hit Joel Eriksson Ek in the face with his stick. That should’ve been a double-minor & it’s hard to believe it wasn’t seen by either official since it came right off the faceoff:

Eriksson Ek got whacked in the face by Landeskog going down low on the faceoff, was bloody and pissed at the referee pic.twitter.com/6K8obH8Zuk

— Internet #BlackLivesMatter (@cjzero) October 31, 2021

Courtesy of @cjzero on Twitter

The Wild made a great push but didn’t score & allowed an empty-net goal for a final score of…

Final Score
(5-3-0) Minnesota Wild 1 | 4 Colorado Avalanche (4-4-0)

Goals (Assists):
MN:
Hartman(4) (Foligno(4), Dumba(4))

COL:
Landeskog(3) (Burakovsky(3), MacKinnon(7))
Johnson(1) (MacKinnon(8), Landeskog(3))
Kadri(3) (Landeskog(4), Compher(3))
Landeskog-ENG(4) (Compher(4), Johnson(2))

Game Notes

*Beckman likes to shoot and we like that….a lot!!! It’s incredibly difficult to score without shooting the puck and the players who score a lot, shoot a lot. They go to the goal-scoring areas and are always ready to shoot. Their teammates know they like to shoot and know where they like the puck for a one-timer.

Beckman probably thinks about shooting every time they get the puck no matter where they are on the ice. That’s what made us think of it. He made a turnaround shot from a bad angle because he has a great shot. He’s likely also been told he’s with the Wild because of that shot so they want him to shoot the puck instead of deferring to his veteran teammates.

**Landeskog is supposed to be a leader for the Avalanche but he takes a lot of really stupid penalties. How many times do those penalties cost his team. The Wild scored on the 2nd power play but his penalty was what caused the 2nd penalty to be drawn.

It appears you just have to get in his head and he’ll get mad and do something stupid.

***Officially Bad! So…here’s the Instigator rule from the 2021-22 NHL Rulebook. Should that have been an instigator? Did MacKinnon have the “distance traveled, first punch thrown, verbal instigation or threats, obvious retribution for a previous incident”? We’d say yes but…what do the ClutterPuckers think?:

Postgame

Coming soon as no videos were up on the Wild’s Press Pass Playlist but here’s the Postgame PONDcast from the radio side from KFAN.

And…here’s the link to @BallySportsNorth’s postgame tweet with Head Coach Dean Evason:
“Looked like a fight to me…I don’t understand it…they dropped their gloves. They throw punches. It’s a fight. He shouldn’t be on the ice for 5 minutes.”

Watch: #mnwild coach Dean Evason after loss to Colorado pic.twitter.com/3mNV6qQJH8

— Bally Sports North (@BallySportsNOR) October 31, 2021

Next up:
vs Ottawa at The X
Tuesday, November 2nd, 2021
at 7:00 pm
on Bally Sports North

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AND…as always…