The Minnesota Wild will try to avoid getting coerced into a fast-paced game when they host the Anaheim Ducks on Saturday evening.
The Ducks are loaded with speedy, young players who have been thriving on odd-man rushes this season. The Wild, on the other hand, would rather wear teams down with long possessions in the offensive zone.
“We have to play that way in order to be good in this league and in order to, essentially, make the playoffs,” Minnesota forward Marcus Foligno said. “That’s our game. That’s our m.o.”
That style has been working lately.
The Wild are 4-1-1 in November, most recently losing 2-1 in overtime to the young and speedy San Jose Sharks on Monday.
“I thought we played a hard game,” Minnesota coach John Hynes said. “I thought we played a pretty good game but, unfortunately, we didn’t get two points. We’ll digest it and then we’ve got a few days before we play again.”
The Ducks will be trying to salvage a win from their three-game road trip.
They lost the opener 4-1 on Tuesday against the Colorado Avalanche to snap a seven-game winning streak, their longest in four years, and then lost again 6-3 on Thursday to the Detroit Red Wings.
“We kept digging ourselves out of a hole, but then we would dig ourselves a deep hole,” Ducks coach Joel Quenneville said after the latest loss. “We had some self-inflicted mistakes on their goals. We have to clean that up.”
Anaheim welcomed back two veteran forwards against Detroit who had been out of action with injuries.
Mikael Granlund returned after missing eight games with a lower-body injury and scored early in the third period to cut the deficit to one. Ryan Strome made his season debut after missing the first 16 games with an upper-body injury and assisted on Granlund’s goal.
“I thought Strome had a really good game, he did a lot of good things,” Quenneville said. “(Granlund) had some nice shifts and a couple nice plays with the puck.”
Strome centered the fourth line with fellow veterans Ross Johnston and Frank Vatrano.
“You’re just trying to get your legs back when you’ve been off for a long time,” Strome said. “I can’t say enough about Frank and Ross for helping me out when I needed it in the first couple of shifts.”
Chris Kreider scored his 10th goal in his 13th game with the Ducks, becoming the second-fastest player in team history to reach double-digit goals behind Steve Thomas, who scored 10 goals in 12 games in 2002-03.
The Wild have also been getting good play from their fourth line of Foligno, Danila Yurov and Yakov Trenin.
Nico Sturm was originally pegged to anchor that line, but he underwent back surgery in early October and won’t be back for another 2-3 weeks.
“It’s been good chemistry and feeding off each other,” Foligno said. “Love playing with those guys. The chemistry has been good.”
Minnesota will face a difficult back-to-back, as it hosts the Vegas Golden Knights on Sunday evening.
The Ducks can look forward to a six-game homestand beginning Monday against the Utah Mammoth.
–Field Level Media
