John Shipley: Wild’s biggest game of the year? You betcha.
After a disappointing 3-2 loss to Carolina on Tuesday at Xcel Energy Center, the Wild find themselves six points out of a Western Conference playoff spot with 23 regular-season games remaining.
So, the Wild aren’t dead yet and in fact have been playing well, 7-2-1 since returning to the all-star break to rise two places in the conference standings. But, boy, their margin for error is thin.
Which makes Thursday night’s game against the Predators in Nashville the kind of game that can make or break this belated run at making the playoffs for the third straight season, fourth if you include the 2020 COVID season.
Right?
“No,” head coach John Hynes said after Tuesday’s game.
“I think this time of year, you’ve gotta be a little leery of getting into, ‘This is the biggest game of the year,’ ” the coach added. “It’s an emotional time of the year. Every game matters, but it’s not like we’re at Game 72 or 73 right now.”
What else is he going to say? Any coach in any sport will tell you, with a straight face, that anything other than an elimination game is not a must-win game, and Thursday’s game against the surging Predators isn’t close to being an elimination game, nor is Saturday’s game at St. Louis.
But let’s be real, they’re close enough.
“They’re not just any other games,” general manager Bill Guerin said Wednesday. “These are huge. These are the two teams ahead of us, and we’ve got a chance to close the gap. These are huge games for us.”
Nashville has won six straight for the current claim on the second conference wild-card playoff spot in the West and is virtually tied with Los Angeles for the first, six points ahead of Minnesota. Thursday represents a four-point sway for both teams. A Minnesota loss puts the Wild eight back with 22 games left.
That’s farther out than the Wild were after losing consecutive home games to Nashville and Anaheim on Jan. 25 and Jan. 27. These are the wages of the Wild’s 5-10-4 start, which concluded with a seven-game losing streak and head coach Dean Evason losing his job.
Losing at home to Carolina, a good team the Wild were nevertheless outplaying for most of the first two periods, stung. Yeah, it wasn’t a conference game, but it was two points they had in their grasp and let drop.
“Hynesy just said something very valuable, that we can’t get too low on losses here and we can’t get too high on wins,” defenseman Declan Chisholm said after the game. “It’s an emotional time, for sure. We’ve gotta play the long game and just stick with it.”
But the long game is becoming shorter, especially with the March 8 trade deadline looming. How close do the Wild need to be for Guerin not to cut bait on the season and try to get something for impending free agents such as Nick Bogosian, Brandon Duhaime or, if possible, Pat Maroon?
Guerin already has added a body, 2020 second-round draft pick Marat Khusnutdinov, who will join the Wild as soon as his work visa is secured. Whether anyone might be leaving is unclear.
“I just gotta play it by ear,” Guerin said. “I haven’t made any decisions on anybody yet. I’ve had plenty of discussions about a lot of different scenarios, but I don’t know yet.”
Since Hynes became coach on Nov. 28, the Wild are 23-14-2, a significant improvement, no doubt. But the team also has spit the bit in a few crucial games this season, most notably those two losses before the all-star break. Beating Nashville, a team the Wild beat 6-1 in their previous meeting, would have pulled Minnesota within two points of eighth place.
Instead, they played a fairly uninspired game and lost 3-2, then inexplicably lost to a terrible Anaheim team two days later. The Wild have played well enough to stay in it and have beaten some good teams, but not well enough to get over the hump.
In that sense, a win Thursday at Bridgestone Arena would be something of a first this season, and a loss would be another kick in the shins.
It’s true, Thursday’s game in Nashville won’t literally make or break the season, but it will go a long way toward pushing it in either direction.
It’s the biggest game of the year.
