For the Minnesota Wild, getting key players healthy and back into the lineup is turning out to be just the first step in what is a longer-than-expected process of getting their groove back.
Returning to winning hockey games with the likes of Kirill Kaprizov and Jared Spurgeon in the lineup remains an elusive goal.
On Saturday, the Wild closed out Hockey Day Minnesota 2025 on a disappointing note, with some penalty-kill struggles and defensive shortcomings that eventually led to a 5-4 win by the Calgary Flames. Trailing by three late, the Wild got a pair of goals in the final 77 seconds, but their rally fell just short.
Joel Eriksson Ek, Freddie Gaudreau, Marcus Foligno and Mats Zuccarello scored for the Wild, who got 24 saves from Marc-Andre Fleury but lost for the fifth time in their past six games. While still holding the best road record in the NHL, Minnesota fell to below .500 at home (11-12-1) with the loss, which came on the heels of a lifeless 4-0 loss to Utah on Thursday in St. Paul.
“Right now the last two games we don’t wanna fight for inside ice. We wanna extra pass, we don’t wanna trigger, we don’t wanna re-hunt rebounds, we don’t wanna get to the net front,” Wild coach John Hynes said. “So it’s always tough when you say their work ethic. We work. It’s not like we didn’t show up and the guys don’t want to try to play to win. But then there’s a specific level of competitiveness and work ethic you need to have, whether that’s at your own net front, at the offensive net front. So we’ve got to get that back.”
The Wild took the first penalty of the game and killed off all but three seconds of it before Calgary took a lead on a deflected puck that Fleury was powerless to stop. Prior to the goal, which came on the Flames’ fourth shot of the game, the Minnesota goalie had made a pair of his trademark sweeping glove saves, to the delight of the sellout audience.
But Minnesota had an answer before the period was half finished, as Zuccarello set up Eriksson Ek’s rising shot from the high slot that forged a 1-all tie. Kaprizov had the second assist, marking his first point since Dec. 23, after he missed a month due to a nagging lower-body ailment.
Calgary’s second power play came early in the middle period when Wild forward Jakub Lauko ran Flames defenseman Kevin Bahl into the end boards.
Originally called a five-minute major penalty, referees reduced it to a two-minute boarding call after video review. Bahl, whose head hit a stanchion behind the net as a result of the hit, left the game. Minnesota killed the penalty and, as is expected in the “frontier justice” world of the NHL, Flames winger Ryan Lomberg dropped the gloves to fight Lauko before the second period was done.
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“I don’t think our game is ideal at all. I think we need to just start from fundamentals again. We don’t have a good forecheck, we don’t have a good backcheck, we’re losing pucks on blue lines and we’re not hard in front of the net,” Lauko said. “So I think we need a big hard reset and go back to what made us great in the first half.”
Later in the period when Wild defenseman Brock Faber lost control of a bouncing puck at the offensive blue line, it touched off an odd-man rush the other way. Fleury made a pair of big saves before Flames winger Martin Pospisil slipped a shot around the goalie, putting the visitors back in front.
Calgary scored again on the power play with 7.9 seconds left in the middle frame to give the Wild a notable third-period hill to climb.
They did not climb it, with Calgary’s Clark Bishop scoring his second career goal late in the third as the Flames pulled away. The fans got a brief chance to cheer when Gaudreau scored on a late power play, but Calgary regained its three-goal advantage just 11 seconds later.
Calgary goalie Dustin Wolf finished with 21 saves for a Flames team that has now won six of its past eight games.
“I liked our game, probably for 58 minutes of it. We did a lot of good things on the road in a tough place to play,” Flames coach Ryan Huska said. “The last couple minutes, they got a little hairy. But they’re small little plays that are often the difference in the game.”
Saturday’s game was the 500th in a Wild uniform for Foligno, who became just the 11th player in franchise history to reach that milestone. He swatted in a loose puck with 1:17 left in the game. Zuccarello scored with Fleury on the bench and 27 seconds remaining.
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Playing in his 17th game this season, Fleury also hit an NHL milestone, moving ahead of Patrick Roy into second place in career minutes played by a goalie, trailing only Martin Brodeur.
“Everybody cares. Everybody wants to win. Everybody wants to do well. It is frustrating that we’re struggling here at home in front of our fans,” Fleury said. “I think sometimes you want to keep it simple. We had a good talk before this game to play like a road game, get the tempo, don’t need to make anything fancy or cute, just play hard hockey. If keep doing this, we’ll have different results.”
The Wild next embark on a five-game road swing which begins on Sunday in Chicago with their fourth and final meeting with the Blackhawks this season. Minnesota is 2-0-1 in the previous three meetings. They will also visit Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa and Boston on the trip before their next home game on Feb. 6 vs. Carolina.
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