SUNRISE, Fla. — The Wild made it crystal clear after Monday’s practice that they considered Tuesday night’s contest against the reigning Stanley Cup champs a measuring stick.
Well, they measured up.
The Wild waltzed into Amerant Bank Arena and spanked Sergei Bobrovsky and the Florida Panthers 5-1 to extend their season-opening point streak to six games (4-0-2).
It’s the Wild’s best start since they opened the 2008-09 season with a 6-0-1 record. The Wild haven’t trailed for a single second in 360 minutes of regulation time this season, the second-longest stretch to open a season in NHL history (the Boston Bruins went the first 457:21 of the 1969-70 season without trailing).
Filip Gustavsson, named the NHL’s Third Star of the Week on Monday after going 2-0 last week with an empty-net goal, improved to 4-0-1 with 24 saves. He has allowed seven goals in five starts.
Kirill Kaprizov had his fifth multi-point game in six outings with two gorgeous assists and Jake Middleton posted the second three-assist game of his career.
Matt Boldy, Joel Eriksson Ek and Mats Zuccarello scored a goal and assist each, Marco Rossi extended his goal and point streaks to career-best runs of three and five games respectively and Marcus Johansson scored for the first time this season.
Bobrovsky was pulled for Spencer Knight to start the third period after allowing five goals on 16 shots.
Center Ryan Hartman missed his second game in a row with an upper-body injury sustained in St. Louis. He hasn’t missed any practice days on the ice, but it’s clear by watching that the injury he’s dealing with is hindering his ability to shoot the puck.
The Wild flew to Tampa after the game and will visit the Lightning on Thursday night.
Kaprizov and Zuccarello pic.twitter.com/YtgrdiwYZH
— Dimitri Filipovic (@DimFilipovic) October 23, 2024
First line magic
All Wild fans know Kaprizov and Zuccarello often look for each other and have a sixth sense all the time for where the other is. That was demonstrated again Tuesday.
But Rossi is fitting in quite well as their No. 1 center. The potential restricted free agent at year’s end broke a 0-0 tie in the first period with a nifty redirection of Kaprizov’s shot with his back toward the net. Kaprizov picked up an awesome assist on the goal by whizzing a pass between defenseman Aaron Ekblad’s legs.
Marco Rossi’s redirect finds twine for his third goal of the season 🚨#mnwild pic.twitter.com/TKDA7V14zZ
— Hockey Daily 365 l NHL Highlights & News (@HockeyDaily365) October 22, 2024
Kaprizov picked up his 36th career multi-assist game to tie playmaker extraordinaires Mikael Granlund and Pierre-Marc Bouchard for fourth-most in Wild history.
Gustavsson finally gives up a high-danger goal
Gustavsson has gotten off to a tremendous start this season. According to NHL Edge was the only goalie in the NHL to have not given up a high-danger goal this season entering Tuesday, going 20-for-20 in four starts.
He made two dandy stops to rob Carter Verhaeghe in the first and second period. But Gustavsson was finally beaten on a high-danger chance he had no chance on when Verhaeghe set up Sam Bennett for a slam dunk on a two-on-one in the second period to cut the Panthers’ deficit to 3-1. But the Wild had a great response to the adversity when Zuccarello and Eriksson Ek scored by period’s end to chase Bobrovsky.
Joel Eriksson Ek joins the scoring party. 🥳 pic.twitter.com/AfPU49lMMn
— Sportsnet (@Sportsnet) October 23, 2024
Brock Faber, who had been on the ice for a pair of six-on-five goals against this season (Mark Scheifele’s last-second first-period goal in Winnipeg with an extra attacker on and Seattle’s Jared McCann’s goal on a delayed penalty), was on the ice for the Bennett goal.
It was the first five-on-five goal Faber was on the ice for this season.
Penalty-free game
The Panthers have a daunting power play, so it’s best to stay out of the box against Sam Reinhart, Matthew Tkachuk, Verhaeghe and gang.
Well, the Wild were uber-disciplined, not taking a penalty for the 13th time in franchise history and seventh time on the road. Conversely, Eriksson Ek drew the first of the Wild’s two power plays, which led to Boldy’s deflection of Zuccarello’s shot for his third goal of the season.
Mats Zuccarello and Matt Boldy team up to push the Minnesota lead to 3#mnwild pic.twitter.com/YWqZyHmNTU
— Hockey Daily 365 l NHL Highlights & News (@HockeyDaily365) October 22, 2024
Spurgeon resumes skating
Captain Jared Spurgeon missed his fourth game of the road trip after experiencing soreness and stiffness as a result of last year’s season-ending hip and back surgeries. The Wild have listed it as a lower-body injury.
While he remains back in Minnesota, the veteran defenseman has resumed skating, coach John Hynes said.
“The fact he’s skating and doing well is a positive,” Hynes said. “So we’ll just take it day by day, I guess, and see.”
President of hockey operations and general manager Bill Guerin said last week that Spurgeon would stay off the ice for a couple of days, then resume skating. So this was all according to plan. It has not yet been decided if Spurgeon will meet the team in Philadelphia or Pittsburgh at the end of the road trip.
“I didn’t push that envelope with (the trainers),” Hynes said. “We’ll get through (the next few days) and then see where he’s at.”
(Photo: Sam Navarro / Imagn Images)
