ST. PAUL, Minn. — This is getting incredibly hard to watch, which is why fans were so justified to boo the Minnesota Wild throughout the third period Saturday night and right off the ice when that final horn mercifully blared.
The Wild look broken. They look tired. They look completely hopeless when it comes to any ability to score.
Saturday night during a 5-1 loss to the St. Louis Blues, they looked like an 18-wheeler sputtering uphill. Unable to find the right gear, the Wild finally stalled and got their doors, windows and tires blown off at home for the umpteenth time this season.
Fifteen games are left this season. Kirill Kaprizov and Joel Eriksson Ek are nowhere close to returning, yet the Wild have lost seven of 10 games (3-6-1) and have scored one goal in four of their past five games and six of their past nine.
Even Mats Zuccarello pointed out that, as exhausting as this is for us to watch, “imagine being out there and feeling the same way.”
“It’s not good enough,” the frustrated playmaker, who has two assists in his past 16 games, said. “Next game we gotta compete and we gotta show up and be hungry. We gotta bounce back after this.”
That next game is Monday night against the Los Angeles Kings, a team that has had the Wild’s number in four of their past five meetings and possesses a lightning-fast, skilled former Wild player named Kevin Fiala who enjoys nothing more than making the Wild remember they traded him away.
Against the Blues, in a game in which the Wild failed to score in the first period for a fifth straight time, the Wild showed signs right from the hop of not having their A-game. In their own zone, they were soft, they were slow and they lost coverage consistently. In the offensive zone, despite somehow being charted with 10 scoring chances by Natural Stat Trick, their shots were so off-target that fans should consider themselves lucky a pane of glass was protecting them from getting clunked with pucks to the head.
“We’ve gotta continue to have the belief that it’ll come,” defenseman Zach Bogosian said. “We’ve had our share of looks in these past few games. Unfortunately, they’re not going in right now. But we have to continue to keep directing pucks at their net, and, you know, eventually they’ll go in.”
The problem is we don’t know that because there’s zero evidence of this wing and prayer.
The Wild have been the third-worst team in the NHL since Jan. 9 (23 points, .442 points percentage in 26 games).
They have been the weakest-scoring team in the NHL for more than two months (2.15 goals per game).
So, this isn’t a dry spell. This is a dry roster, a lineup made up of third- and fourth-liners manning the second, third and fourth lines and a first line that includes three exhausted-looking players.
It’s shocking that the slow-looking Wild haven’t improved offensively when their trade deadline pickups were 35-year-old Gustav Nyquist, who was having a downtrodden year in Nashville and hasn’t scored since Jan. 25 and has one five-on-five goal since Oct. 28, and Justin Brazeau, a mostly career minor leaguer and NHL bottom-six winger who’s not the fleetest of foot and fell out of favor in Boston.
Then, on the top line, Zuccarello at least has scored three times in the past eight games.
But what’s going on with Marco Rossi and Matt Boldy?
The 23-year-olds are either succumbing to the pressure with Kaprizov and Eriksson Ek sidelined or completely gassed with how much is being asked of them to provide the scoring for this feeble bunch.
Rossi once was a point-per-game player. He has scored no goals and has two assists in his past nine games. Saturday night, he had one shot on goal.
Boldy once was a point-per-game player. He hasn’t scored a goal in 10 games. Saturday night, he had one shot on goal and many turnovers at the defensive blue line and perimeter play.
What’s scarier: Since getting off to that 11-goal, 22-point start in his first 20 games, Boldy has 10 goals and 33 points in his last 47. And in the last 48 games, he has gone one 20-game stretch with no goals in 18 games and is in a 21-game stretch with no goals in 19 games.
That’s just not good enough for somebody the team considers a secondary star to Kaprizov. Instead, Boldy has shown he’s incapable of stepping up without Kaprizov.
Coach John Hynes loathes singling out any player, so it wasn’t a surprise when he sidestepped a question about each first-line forward.
“I think tonight, just overall … I just think the competitive edge that we play with, we didn’t have enough,” Hynes said. “We had it at times, but we didn’t have it for the full 60. I think some of the attention to detail, the laser focus we play with, you know, two faceoff goals where we can do a little bit better job.
“To me, I just think even tonight’s game, like, we were 39 percent on faceoffs. I think those are areas that we have to be better.”
It was obvious in the first period that the Wild were getting roasted in defensive-zone draws and it would eventually bite them. It did on Brayden Schenn’s game-opening goal, and it did on Jake Neighbours’ eventual winning goal after a sloppy icing by the fourth line — the Wild’s best line Saturday, which is never a good sign — led to Devin Shore getting smoked on a faceoff by Robert Thomas before a broken play.
“That’s no secret that we’re struggling to score goals as of late,” Zuccarello said. “They score on their chances, and we don’t.”
LOVE THY NEIGHBOURS pic.twitter.com/Vd8cEpsI3q
— St. Louis Blues (@StLouisBlues) March 16, 2025
When Wild-killer Jordan Kyrou scored the first of his three goals (15 goals and 26 points in 23 games against the Wild) to make it 3-0, it felt like a miracle would need to happen for the Wild to finally score.
It did 25 seconds later when goalie Joel Hofer had to play a puck because Vinnie Hinostroza was going to beat out an icing. He passed to Kyrou in the middle of the Blues’ zone, but Kyrou turned the puck over to Jake Middleton and the Wild defenseman scored through Marcus Foligno’s leaping screen just as Hofer returned to the crease after taking the long way back to his net.
Jake Middleton gets Minnesota on the board. Wild trail 3-1 pic.twitter.com/GDyuxhCrY6
— Spoked Z (@SpokedZ) March 16, 2025
Unfortunately, the only way the Wild were going to score again and once after that to tie the score at 3 was if Hofer coughed up the puck two more times.
The Wild clearly weren’t going to be able to generate those goals themselves.
Instead, Hofer had a short memory and recovered to rob Zuccarello moments later, and the rest is history. The Wild played a hideous third period, and the Blues got two more goals from Kyrou. The Wild are now 6 points up on the Vancouver Canucks and 8 points up on the Blues and Calgary Flames, who are just outside the playoff threshold.
JORDAN KYROU ACTIVATED DRS! 🏎️ pic.twitter.com/i86o2urvlD
— NHL (@NHL) March 16, 2025
The Wild better hope it’s not a chase for the seventh spot, too. They are still 8 points up, but who’s confident with this team right now, especially knowing the cavalry — besides injured defenseman Jonas Brodin — isn’t close to returning?
“It’s almost like we’re waiting for it,” Middleton said of the goal struggles. “We’re waiting for the next guy to do it, the guy beside you. When we’re not scoring as a team, we all got to do it together, right? In recent games, the work ethic is there. But we gotta start stepping up as a team here and putting the puck in the back of the net and just playing harder.”
“At the end of the day, if we lose 5-1 at home, it’s not acceptable,” Zuccarello said of the Wild, who are 15-15-2 at home and have scored five times on a 1-2-1 homestand. “Everyone in here knows it’s embarrassing for us to play like that, but what are we going to say? You gotta take it on the chin right now, and it’s not good enough.
“There’s a hungry team coming in here Monday. We gotta be ready to compete and win hockey games.”
Zuccarello wants more swagger in the Wild’s game, more “eff you,” he said, like perhaps attacking the third period when the Blues were scrambling rather than circling back so many times that they allowed a player with a broken stick to actually get to the bench to retrieve a new one.
Of the many embarrassing things that occurred on the ice Saturday, that was the most shocking.
The fans would sure enjoy seeing some swagger and “eff you” after a home slate of games in which they’ve continued to pack Xcel Energy Center, only to see little pep, little spark, few goals and lots and lots of losses from their favorite aggravating hockey team.
The Wild are wasting this homestand, and that team that once led the NHL in points in late December is starting to really, really waste away this season.
(Photo of Jordan Kyrou scoring on the open net against Marcus Foligno: Matt Blewett / Imagn Images)
