The Minnesota Wild were looking to get on a roll as they started a short 2-game road trip in Detroit before playing Columbus tonight then playing 9 in a row at home.
After winning at home against the New York Rangers, the Wild hope it will be a turning point for their season after a tough 2-8 stretch that spanned 18 days. They were on a roll before that, going 11-2 in the 13 games from January 6th through Valentine’s Day.
They faced a Detroit Red Wings team they had beat 7-4 on Valentine’s Day and the Wings have struggled since the calendar turned to 2022. They were a game above .500 on New Year’s Day and they were 3 games under .500 when the puck dropped last night, going 9-13-3 and 4-8-2 at home during that stretch. They’ve apparently had some problems on defense &/or in goal as they’ve allowed a whopping 36 goals in their past 6 games and 45 in their past 8 when they last played Minnesota. That includes 2 games where they allowed 9 & 10 goals. Geez!
Let’s see if that meant a bunch of pucks tickling the twine for the Wild and since playing the Red Wings last time triggered a bad stretch, maybe playing them again will trigger a good stretch.
Here’s how the teams lined up:
Minnesota Wild
No changes to the lineup from the game vs the Rangers for the Minnesota Wild:
Detroit Red Wings
Game Recap
It took the Wild just 97 seconds to score the 1st goal of the game and it came off the stick of F Matt Boldy as he shot the one-timer from a great feed from F Kevin Fiala from behind the net.
Unfortunately, that lead didn’t even last 5 minutes as the Wild lost a puck battle on the left boards that allowed F Jakub Vrana to come out to the top of the circle and beat G Cam Talbot to the upper left corner to tie the game.
The Wild would take their 1-goal lead back when Detroit G Alexander Nedeljkovic misplayed a puck that was just redirected into the zone by Wild F Joel Erikkson Ek. The puck was going wide of the net to his right but Nedeljkovic tried to swat at it with the back of his stick to send it back to his left and the puck went off the heel of his stick and deflected through his legs and into the net.
If you watch it, you can see what he’s trying to do but his execution was obviously horrible.
His team had his back though as they scored 2 more goals before the end of the 1st period to give Detroit a 3-2 lead. The first one off the stick of rookie F Lucas Raymond for an easy one-timer into a gaping net due to a great play by former Wild (& Minnesota Gopher) D Nick Leddy. It’s pretty clear that Wild G Cam Talbot was trying to find the puck and the Leddy spin-o-rama messed him up.
The second one came on the Power Play and Jakub Vrana got his 2nd goal of the game on a one-timer that he didn’t get all of so it was a Flutterpuck (or changeup) that fooled Talbot.
Shots were 10-9 Detroit after the first 20 minutes.
The physicality of this game may have turned up a little over a minute in when Matt Dumba threw a pretty big hit on Lucas Raymond.
Raymond scored his 2nd goal of the game about 4 minutes later when he received another great feed from Nick Leddy to the front of the net that he deflected past Talbot to put Detroit up 2 goals.
The Wild continued to battle as they were looking more & more like their old resilient selves as this game moved along.
The Wild received a power play on an interference penalty that may have also increased the physical intensity but it probably shouldn’t have. Detroit F Michael Rasmussen was trying to get back onside so the puck could be dumped in and he lunged/dove to get across the blue line and inadvertently ran into Wild F Marcus Foligno who took it as a somewhat hostile act and he was trying to have some words with Rasmussen.
On the ensuing power play, the Wild got within one goal when F Mats Zuccarello took a shot from the top of the left circle and the puck deflected off of Detroit F Filip Hronek’s stick then squeaked under G Nedeljkovic’s (or the 7-hole).
The goal was originally attributed to Joel Eriksson Ek as he was right in front of the ‘tendy but it’s obvious on the replay that he doesn’t touch it.
The Wild were within 1…then…they appeared to have scored the game-tying goal off a tip in front from F Jordan Greenway but Detroit challenged the call for goaltender interference…
And…we still aren’t clear what goaltender interference is because it keeps going back and forth on if it is or if it isn’t.*
*Check the Game Notes section at the bottom of the article for more on this topic.
The Wild got hemmed in their own zone but they didn’t panic and got out of it unscathed but there were some more big hits during the game. Moritz Seider & Kirill Kaprizov were getting into it and you could just feel things getting worse until all hell broke loose and there was almost a full-on line brawl and almost a goalie fight as the buzzer to end the 2nd period rang out.
It took quite a while for the teams to get off the ice after the 2nd period due to all the melee.
To begin the 3rd period, the penalties for the end of the 2nd were assessed and somehow Detroit ended up with a power play because Cam Talbot left his goal crease:
So…that means, if the goalie is in the scrum, that team outnumbers the opposition and that’s completely okay. That seems wrong, doesn’t it?
So…the Wild were down a goal and had to kill off a penalty to begin the 3rd then get back to work to get back in the game.
They killed it off, a very important kill for the struggling PK of the Minnesota Wild.
Just more than a minute after the penalty was killed, Wild F Matt Boldy tied the game with his 2nd goal of the game
When Detroit cleared their defensive zone, the Wild quickly transitioned back to offense in the neutral zone. Alex Goligoski corralled the puck at center ice and quickly passed to Frédérick Gaudreau at the right boards. Detroit D Marc Staal, who also cleared the zone, made a bad change which allowed the Wild to get a 2-on-1 with Matt Boldy heading up the left-center of the offensive zone. He received the pass and was able to beat Nedeljkovic through the 5-hole to make it a brand new game.
Wild D Matt Dumba blocked a shot and went down in pain and the Detroit fans cheered** since he and Detroit F Lucas Raymond fought. He ended up going back to the locker room for a while.
**Check the Game Notes section at the bottom of the article for more on this topic.
Another scrum developed after the whistle that resulted in coincidental minors to Wild F Nick Bjugstad and Detroit F Joe Veleno, both for roughing with 11:13 remaining in regulation.
Dumba came back to the ice and took a body check from Michael Rasmussen who then tried to entice Dumba to drop the mitts but that’s not his game, anymore.*** Red Wings fans then started booing him every time he touched the puck. Classy. Both players get back into it after the next whistle with Rasmussen stopping to meet Dumba, who shoves him and gets shoved back. A shift later, off the faceoff, Lucas Raymond sprays Wild G Cam Talbot after a save and Ryan Hartman takes offense to that. It might be too bad that we won’t see these teams play again until next season.
***Check the Game Notes section at the bottom of the article for more on this topic.
The Wild had the momentum through the majority of the period after the penalty that began the period. They were getting their 5-0n-5 game going and getting chances but not capitalizing until Kirill Kaprizov entered the offensive zone on the left side and tried to get around Detroit D Moritz Seider but he was taken down with a good hit to the crowd’s delight. Kirill didn’t stop battling though and he ended up getting the puck back while on the ice by hooking it with the toe of his stick. (Exactly halfway through the replay below, 18 seconds in.)
Kaprizov took another body check and lost the puck again but F Joel Eriksson Ek got to the loose puck at the left half-wall and skated it back to the center of the blue line and passed it to Matt Dumba at the right point. He sent it to the net. Moritz Seider blocked the shot but that caused a loose puck in front of the net and Kaprizov hit it with a backhand and it went off of Nick Leddy’s skate then the goalie’s right pad and right back to Kaprizov for a quick shot into a gaping net and the Wild led 5-4.
A whole lot of chasing the puck from Detroit on this one.
A little more than 5 minutes later, the Wild returned the favor and did some puck-chasing themselves and allowed Detroit to tie the game at 5.
There wasn’t a good angle of it but a player can only get wide open if you’re watching the puck.
Detroit had some momentum after scoring the tying goal but the game would go to Overtime where the Wild outshot Detroit 7-0 but none of those shots produced a goal so to a shootout they went:
Detroit
Jakub Vrana missed the net – No Goal
Minnesota
Mats Zuccarello scored with a deke
Detroit
Dylan Larkin hit the post – No Goal
Minnesota
Kevin Fiala came in with speed, moved to the left then floated the puck into the net…
SHOOTOUT WIN for the Wild!!!
Final Score
Minnesota Wild 6 | 5 Detroit Red Wings
Goals:
MN: Boldy(10), Ek(18), Zuccarello(18), Boldy(11), Kaprizov(29)
DET: Vrana(2), Raymond(17), Vrana(3), Raymond(18), Oesterle(2)
Assists:
MN: Fiala(32), Gaudreau(17); Unassisted; Spurgeon(19), Hartman(19); Gaudrau(18), Goligoski(25); Dumba(18), Ek(13)
DET: Veleno(6); Leddy(12), Nedeljkovi(1); Hronek(14), Leddy(13); Leddy(14), Namestnikov(11); Zadena(12), Veleno(7)
Goalies:
MN: Cam Talbot – 29 Saves on 34 Shots on Goal – .853%
DET: Alexander Nedeljkovic – 35 Saves on 40 Shots on Goal – .875%
Game Notes
*Goaltender Interference!
What is it?
The only clear thing about it is that it’s blurry.
“That is clearly blurry. I can’t see anything right now.”
–
ClutterPuck
Wild F Marcus Foligno was pushed into the opposing goalie vs Buffalo and it was called goaltender interference…
Then, against Dallas, Frédérick Gaudreau apparently pushed Seguin into Kaapo Kähkönen and it was called a goal so the Wild challenged and it was not called goaltender interference…
So…yeah…we don’t know. What do you think?
**Fans Applauding an Injury
This seems petty, right? I get it. Fans don’t like the opponent but why cheer when a player may have gotten hurt?
Are there any players actually going into a game trying to hurt anyone? It’s highly doubtful. They’re just competing hard to get 2 points because they want to win because losing sucks.
Booing doesn’t really make sense, either. Do fans really think the opposing players care what they think about them? Booing may even help motivate the opponent to play even harder so…again, why do it?
Booing the home team?
What do you think? I don’t know. It might motivate the players to play better because they obviously don’t want to disappoint their own fans. It’s somewhat hard to believe that works, either, though.
***Matt Dumba and Fighting
Fights are entertaining and they serve somewhat of a purpose in hockey in that they help to protect players and can be used to try to get your team some momentum.
Matt Dumba is a physical player but his fighting days appear to be over because of the injury that seems to have changed his career.
He may have thrown his last punch in an actual fight on December 15th, 2018 vs the Calgary Flames when he supposedly had to “answer the bell” for a legal body check he made late against a Calgary player in the previous matchup just 9 days earlier on December 6th. A Calgary goon, Ryan Lomberg, tried to make Dumba fight for the hit with 43 seconds remaining in the game to which he did not oblige. Did that make him feel like he needed to step up in the next game?
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Mathew Dumba Stats Before the Injury:
Mathew Dumba Stats After the Injury:
The real question is did that injury change the way he can play? Shoot? Other?
That’s a question for another time and article hopefully coming very soon!
Next up:
At the Columbus Blue Jackets at 6pm CST on Bally Sports North as they try to get a winning streak going.
Thanks for reading!!! Bring the Clutter in the comments &/or on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook or LinkedIn…
AND…as always…
