Wild Game Day number 11 Wild Record (6-2-2 14 pts) Road Record (1-2-0)
Opponent: Vancouver Canucks (6-6-0 12 pts) Home Record (2-2-0)
Site: Rogers Arena, Vancouver, BC
Time: 9:00PM CT
TV: Fox Sports North (FSN)
Last Season Result: 10/24 Canucks 1 @ Wild 0 1/14 Canucks 3 @ Wild 2 3/9 Wild 5 @ Canucks 2
Minnesota's takes it's five game winning streak to the road where they will play their next seven beginning tonight in Vancouver. Over the last two seasons the Canucks have handled Bruce Boudreau's club pretty well winning four of the six meetings between the two. Surprisingly though, only one of those four wins has come at Rogers Arena.
Vancouver has struggled to score this having scored just eight goals over their last six games and just one in the last two, a 4-1 loss at Arizona Thursday and blanked at home 5-0 to the Penguins on Saturday. Canucks rookie, Elias Pettersson returned to the lineup after missing the previous six games following the viscous hit by Florida's Mike Matheson, which resulted in a two game suspension for the Panther defenseman. The 19 year old Pettersson has been amazing lighting the lamp five times in his first five games while adding three assists for the fifth overall pick in 2017.
Travis Green, the Canucks second year head coach is one of the best young coaches in the game getting the most out of a team that lacks top tier talent. Gone are the Sedins and the team now is all about youth and a new generation of Canuck talent led by Burnsville's own Brock Boeser, Bo Horvat, and the aforementioned Pettersson.
The Wild by contrast are the oldest team in the league, who after a slow start have strung together five in row with four of the wins being decided in the third period. That is a good sign of character for the Wild, but does not discount the fact that they have scored first in just 3 of the first 10 games.
Jordan Greenway was recalled from Iowa as planned for the road trip, and his two game confidence boost trip to the minors appears to have worked even better than anyone could have planned. After being held off the scoreboard Friday night, Greenway found the back of the net three times on Saturday and returns to the big club with confidence level both physical and mental.
Boudreau has a healthy forward that will watch the game from the pressbox now with Greenway back in the lineup and Eriksson Ek fully recovered. As we talk about on this blog a lot, competition is good for everyone.
Projected Wild lines: Eriksson Ek Staal Zucker Parise Koivu Granlund Greenway Coyle Read Foligno Fehr Brown
Not sure who the odd man out is, but Nino Niederreiter could possibly be the guy and watching may be just what he needs to get going.
Suter Dumba Brodin Spurgeon Seeler Pateryn
Dubnyk Stalock
It's always Hockey Day in The State of Hockey!
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