Since losing the first three games of the 2022-23 season, the Minnesota Wild have gone 2-0-1, playing easily their best game against the Montreal Canadiens on Tuesday, Oct.25. Their offense has never been a question mark, scoring at least three goals in every game, but the defense and goaltending finally looked better as they held the Canadiens to one goal. An excellent performance by Marc-Andre Fleury has everyone hoping he has regained his confidence and will finally be an anchor for the Wild moving forward.
Related: Wild Can Build Upon Positive Momentum With 4 Games This Week
Hopefully, grabbing points in three games in a row has given the Wild the boost they needed because tonight they face an Ottawa Senators team currently on a four-game winning streak. The Senators are hot offensively, netting 22 goals in the last four games, including seven against a strong Boston Bruins team that handed the Wild an overtime loss on Oct. 22. The Wild will have to play tight defensively, minimize turnovers, and get solid goaltending if they don’t want to fall back into the losers column again.
Wild Projected Lineup
This season’s lines are not producing the same numbers as they did last season, so the Wild decided to try something new in their last game, and for the most part, it worked. They will roll out mostly the same lines again tonight in hopes of building on any newly found chemistry.
Kirill Kaprizov – Freddy Gaudreau – Mats Zuccarello
Marcus Foligno – Marco Rossi – Matt Boldy
Brandon Duhaime – Joel Eriksson Ek – Ryan Hartman
Mason Shaw – Sam Steel – Connor Dewar
Jacob Middleton – Jared Spurgeon
Jonas Brodin – Calen Addison
Jon Merrill – Matt Dumba
Marc-Andre Fleury – Filip Gustavsson
The top three lines look the best they have all season, so there is really no reason to alter them. Hartman has not been producing on the top line with Kaprizov and Zuccarello and had a slightly more productive game playing with Eriksson Ek and Duhaime. Gaudreau had a strong performance in his home province and has earned another night as a first-line center. The captain of the Iowa Wild, Mason Shaw, is also expected to play his second game of the season tonight, replacing Tyson Jost on the fourth line.
Promoting the rookie points leader Calen Addison into the top four alongside Brodin appears to have worked and will get another look. We will not see Goligoski in the lineup; he will be a healthy scratch for the third game in a row. The Wild will instead turn to Merrill on the third pairing.
Senators Projected Lineup
The Senators had a brilliant offseason, bringing in some big names to help their solid core of young players, and it seems to be paying off with six players scoring at a point-per-game pace or better.
Brady Tkachuk – Tim Stutzle – Drake Batherson
Alex Debrincat – Derick Brassard – Claude Giroux
Tyler Motte – Shane Pinto – Mathieu Joseph
Parker Kelly – Mark Kastelic – Austin Watson
Thomas Chabot – Artem Zub
Jake Sanderson – Travis Hamonic
Erik Brannstrom – Nikita Zaitsev
Anton Forsberg – Magnus Hellberg
While it’s no surprise their top two lines are firing on all cylinders, the third line has been a key driving force in their recent win streak. The emergence of rookie Shane Pinto as a solid scorer (tied with Addison in points) should help to ease the blow of the long-term injury to Josh Norris. The Senators’ wealth of scoring talent makes them a triple threat that can be hard to defend against.
Key Players to Watch
Minnesota Wild – Marco Rossi
The 21-year-old center from Austria was drafted in 2020 with hopes of one day becoming the number-one center for the Wild. In five games this season, Marco Rossi has yet to score any points, but he has been bounced around the fourth line, was a healthy scratch, and finally appears to be building some chemistry and comfort on a line with Boldy.
Wild fans have been clamoring for Rossi to make the NHL lineup since his debut last season in tandem with Boldy; however, being a year younger than Boldy and missing an entire season due to a COVID health complication set his timeline back. Now that he has started to get his feet under him, there is a noticeable difference in his game, and it is only a matter of time before he breaks the seal and points come flooding in.
Ottawa Senators – Brady Tkachuk
Since joining the Senators lineup in 2018-19, Brady Tkachuk has been an offensive force. While he had a career-best 67 points (30 goals) in 2021-22, he already has 10 points in six games this season, including four multi-point games. As he enters the second year of his seven-year, $57.5 million extension, he is primed for a massive breakout campaign to prove he is worth it.
The Wild will not come away with a victory if they can’t minimize Tkachuk’s damage. Not only is he the Senators’ biggest scoring threat, but he is also known for being a pest who can throw opponents off their game and force careless retaliation penalties. Calm heads and thick skin are required when playing against any Tkachuk in the NHL.
*Player statistics collected from Naturalstattrick.com, Ottawa Senators lines from @TSN1200 on Twitter, Minnesota Wild lines from @Russohockey on Twitter.
Being from the east coast of Canada, I’ve grown up immersed in hockey since before I was old enough to walk. The Minnesota Wild joined the league right as I was trying to find a favourite team and I have been committed to them ever since. I like to take breaks from my day job of writing reports as a Scientist by writing articles about my hockey passion. Follow me on twitter @tysmck15 for my latest.
