The Minnesota Wild will try to snap a three-game losing streak when they host the Tampa Bay Lightning on Thursday night in St. Paul, Minn.
The Wild are coming off a 3-1 loss on home ice against the Calgary Flames on Tuesday. That followed back-to-back losses against the Winnipeg Jets during a home-and-home series Saturday and Sunday.
Injuries have stacked up along with the losses. During the past three games, the Wild have lost top scorer Kirill Kaprizov, No. 1 goaltender Filip Gustavsson and gritty veteran Marcus Foligno to injuries.
“For sure, they’re leaders on our team,” Wild forward Joel Eriksson Ek said. “But we can’t really focus on that. We have to focus on what we have and play our best to win games.”
The Wild’s next challenge will come against the Lightning, who also are looking for their first victory of 2024. Tampa Bay is coming off a 4-2 loss at Winnipeg on Tuesday.
Lightning defenseman Victor Hedman said he and his teammates needed to stay positive.
“I think today we played good enough to win,” Hedman said. “For us, we trust in what we have and we’ve just got to keep believing. That’s the bottom line.
“Winnipeg has a great record for a reason and a solid team that’s well coached with great goaltending. But I think we stood up pretty good and I felt like we could’ve got a point out of this one.”
Tampa Bay is expected to start Andrei Vasilevskiy in net. The former Vezina Trophy winner is 8-8-0 with a 2.94 goals-against average and a .900 save percentage this season.
Vasilevskiy has faced Minnesota in 10 games in his career and is 4-4-2 with a 2.48 GAA and a .920 save percentage.
The Wild likely will counter with veteran goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury, who is set to make his third start in a row in place of the injured Gustavsson. The 39-year-old Fleury is one victory shy of matching Patrick Roy for second in NHL history with 551.
Fleury is 6-7-2 this season with a 3.09 GAA and an .896 save percentage. He has faced the Lightning 44 times during his illustrious career, posting a 21-15-4 record with a 2.68 GAA and a .902 save percentage.
This will be the first of two meetings. Both matchups will take place this month, with the teams scheduled to face off Jan. 18 in Tampa.
Pat Maroon is in his first season with the Wild after playing the previous four seasons in Tampa Bay. He said that Minnesota was in a tough spot with injuries but had to keep looking forward.
“You can’t hang your head in this league,” Maroon said. “There’s going to be ebbs and flows in this league a lot. There’s going to be ups and downs. There’s going to be times where you think you should have won a game, but you lose. There’s times where you win a game that you should have lost.
“Can’t hang our heads now. We’re still in the playoff hunt. There’s still a lot of hockey to be played.”
–Field Level Media
