SALT LAKE CITY — Mats Zuccarello put it simply after another loss to the Utah Mammoth.
“These guys have kind of been our kryptonite the last couple years,” Zuccarello said.
The Minnesota Wild’s 5-2 loss Friday night at the Delta Center was the latest example. The once Arizona Coyotes are 5-1 against Minnesota since moving to Utah.
“They make plays, they’re hard on pucks,” Zuccarello said. “They play that in-your-face game. We don’t play our best, but they prevent us from playing our best, too, so we’ve got to give them credit.”
The loss snapped the Wild’s six-game winning streak and came one night after an impressive victory over the best-in-the-NHL Colorado Avalanche in Denver. What made matters worse is Minnesota lost arguably its most irreplaceable player, Joel Eriksson Ek, who left in the second period after taking a high stick to the face. Coach John Hynes didn’t have an update after the game.
“I mean, we all know the type of player (Eriksson Ek) is, the situations we count on him to play,” Hynes said. “Hopefully he’s OK.”
Hynes liked the Wild’s start to the game, their first 10-12 minutes. That included several quality scoring chances, with Ryan Hartman’s back-to-back point-blank looks around five minutes in. Though Hynes said their game started to stray midway through the first with their puck management, and “we never got it back.”
“They fly through the neutral zone, and it kind of broke our back today,” Nico Sturm said. “We couldn’t deny their zone entries as much as we wanted to, and once they’re in, they like the cutbacks. They’re shifty, their smaller players, the forward group, they’re very fast. They’re crafty. The solution is to stop the damage before it gets there, and we weren’t good at the D-zone denials.”
The Wild entered the game on a 9-1-1 stretch, with this a rare game where they were just off. Defenseman Brock Faber said the back-to-back wasn’t an excuse. “We just weren’t good enough.”
“We’ve played some really good hockey for a long time,” Zuccarello said. “We’re not going to win every game. That’s just the way it is. It’s the NHL, any team can lose. It’s tough to lose, and (Utah) has our number. We’ve got to go again on Sunday and forget about this quick.”
Joel Eriksson Ek’s injury
The sight of Eriksson Ek down on the ice in pain late in the second period had to send shivers down any Wild fan’s spine.
The team’s top two-way center had taken a high stick from Nick Schmaltz in the face, and it looked like it was in the eye area. The Wild medical staff tended to Eriksson Ek before he skated off and headed down the tunnel. There wasn’t much information available after the game, but teammates were hoping for the best.
“Obviously, he’s a massive part of all our areas of our game,” Sturm said. “One of the more underrated forwards in the league.”
Eriksson Ek was coming off a big game in Denver on Thursday, when he scored two power-play goals in a 5-2 win. It’s uncertain yet whether Eriksson Ek will be back for Sunday’s game against the St. Louis Blues. The depth at center is already thin; Ben Jones or Hunter Haight could get called up if need be.
“It sucks, right?” Faber said. “He’s one of our most important players, one of our best players. You hate to see something like that, but that’s hockey.”
Depending on how serious Eriksson Ek’s injury is, it’ll be interesting to see how it’ll impact the Wild’s plans ahead of Friday’s trade deadline. The team was already in the market for a center.
Odds and ends
• Jesper Wallstedt, making his first start coming out of the break, gave up five goals in 37 shots, but Hynes and teammates made it clear the Swedish goaltender was not to blame for their fate.
“We were telling him on the way off the ice that the score isn’t even close to indicative of the way he played tonight,” Faber said. “I thought he was probably our best player tonight. He gave us a chance. He played awesome. He battled really hard. It was just one of those nights for us. Make sure he keeps his head up. He gave us the chance to come back.”
• You don’t see this very often, but Quinn Hughes got the puck stripped from him along the boards by Schmaltz early in the second period, leading to a Clayton Keller goal to make it 2-0. Hughes’ 11-game points streak was snapped. He’ll head to New York on Saturday to be part of “Saturday Night Live.”
• The Wild caught a break in the second period when a Dylan Guenther goal — which would have made it 4-0 — was waived off after a successful offsides challenge. Kirill Kaprizov scored a power-play goal not too long after to make it 3-1, but the team didn’t get closer.
• Kaprizov’s power-play goal was his 33rd of the season and brought him to within one goal of tying Marian Gaborik for the all-time franchise record (219).
• Matt Boldy has eight goals and 18 points in his last nine games, and his 35 goals are tied with Connor McDavid’s for second in the NHL.