Wild forward Ryan Hartman.

STONY POINT  – Don’t look now but the Minnesota Wild are in choppier waters than a nor’easter can stir up in November on our most favorite lake in the world. It seems like the team’s entire offense is on injured reserve (at least the ones that can score with some frequency) and a strong effort at team defense and some stout netminding are about the only two factors that have kept the team’s goals-against number at an acceptable level.

All of your other basic stat categories show a team in the bottom fourth of the league. Future HHOF goalie Marc Andre’ Fleury has been trying to tie the NHL all-time wins by a goaltender record of Patrick Roy for four straight games now with no results. In a 3-1 home-ice loss to the Calgary Flames earlier this week he surrendered only two goals but as they say in baseball, the “run support” wasn’t there.

Most nights in this league if you only give up two goals you usually win. But not on this night. The team followed up the loss to the Flames with another to the Tampa Bay Lightning in a 4-1 defeat. One of the Bolt’s goals was an empty-netter but no matter, after a somewhat even first frame, the Bolts took over and owned most of the latter two periods to slip out of St. Paul with a win.

I must note that the Wild’s lone score came late in the third period and was obviously of no consequence to the final outcome. Quite dismaying within this loss is that the Wild trio of Matt Boldy, Marco Rossi and Marcus Johansson had no shot attempts 50 minutes into the tilt. And I never got the feeling during this game that the Bolts were playing some sort of shutdown defense on any one of these three. Neither did they come into St. Paul on a winning streak. Both clubs entered the tilt at 1-3 in their previous four games before the Thursday night matchup. The Bolts are currently one point out of a wild-card playoff spot and have played more games already than those above them in the standings.

The Wild stand in 7th place in the Western Conference Central division and are in the 13th position conference-wise, five spots removed from a playoff wild card invite. Just before the December-ending weekend debacle against the Winnipeg Jets the team was closing in on a wild card spot and were within two points of catching the Nashville Predators.

That came crashing down quickly and the team has now lost four straight. Considering how they have performed since then and what is coming up in the near future schedule-wise while factoring in the team’s abominable injury situation, I don’t currently see a way for the club to reinsert itself into the playoff race. They will play at the Columbus Bluejackets this evening and the most challenging part of the upcoming week is a home-and-home set with the Dallas Stars.

They will complete a tough week with home back-to-backs versus the resurgent Philadelphia Flyers and Arizona Coyotes. If I’m being a realist here I see a 1-3 week ahead for the team at best. I wish I could say differently, but can’t. Current data on the team shows six players on injured reserve and one listed as day-to-day. On the IR are Spurgeon, Brodin, Gustavsson, Kaprizov, Lettieri, and Zuccarello. Foligno is day-to-day. Word is that the team is ready to move Zuccarello to the active roster. I

n the basic stats category the team is 25th in Goals For. (109) They are tied for 13th in Goals Against. (118) They are 23rd on the Power Play. (18%) They are at 29th on the Penalty Kill. (72.7%) And they take the 5th most penalties in the league. (444 PIMs) They are at 23rd in the league standings with a points percentage of .486%. The team has played 37 games, with 45 to go. Could they still get into the playoffs? Personally, and based on what I’ve seen from this team this year, I don’t see it.

The current Season Projections from The Athletic have the Wild in the 17th spot with a 42% chance of getting in along with a 1% chance of a Stanley Cup win. That is the current reality friends... Now, do we have trouble right here in River City? That is what a handful of different hockey scribes are saying at this time. For a brief outline here, in game one of last weekend’s games against the Jets, Wild star forward Kirill Kaprizov was the recipient of two fairly nasty crosschecks to the lower back by Jets defenseman Brenden Dillon. These put Kaprizov out of the game and onto the injured reserve list.

Wild D-man Jake Middleton took on Dillon in a spirited bout shortly after to “settle” the score, but things didn’t end there. In the return game in the Capital City the next day Wild forward Ryan Hartman high-sticked Jet forward Cole Perfetti and cut him on the face to the tune of two stitches. During this game Perfetti was wearing a microphone for the TV broadcast and claimed that Hartman told him that it was “on purpose” and in retaliation for the Kaprizov incident.

Later in the week Hartman would refute that and remind all involved that everyone on the Wild knew he was mic’d up for the tilt (teams are advised of that in pregame information) and that Perfetti himself kept baiting Hartman into saying that it was intentional so that it could be captured on tape. Hartman stated for the record that he said no such thing. Needless to say there is still some bickering going on between the two teams, their media and fanbases. Beyond that the teams will meet again on Feb. 20 in The Peg. That tilt could be interesting.

Of interest to me was a story I came across decrying the NHL for allowing this kind of play to go on considering that another Wild player, Jonas Brodin, has been out since early December due to another questionable hit during a game versus Edmonton involving the Oilers’ Evander Kane. This was a hit from behind that drove Brodin into the boards hard. And like the play against Kaprizov, no penalty was called.

Brodin has missed 12 games now,  and Kaprizov is at three games and counting. The NHL could change this but hasn’t. If there are two issues that could make the game exponentially safer for players it would be a hard-nosed crackdown on crosschecking and checking from behind.

I’ve never found anything manly about using your stick on another player or hitting an unsuspecting opponent from behind and hurting him. I’ve seen two players injured this week when checked from behind in an unsafe and reckless manner.

If hockey players really are among the toughest pro athletes going, neither of those infractions is necessary to prove that. At a presser in June of 2021 before the Cup Final Commissioner Gary Bettman stated that the league was “looking into” the crosschecking issue.

Well Gary, it’s January 2024. Could you let me know if you’ve found anything yet? No? Perhaps you aren’t looking too hard. PEACE