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Wild Look To Continue Mastery Of Canadiens |
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Wild Game Day number 30
Wild Record (15-12-2 32 pts)
Home Record (8-4-2)
Opponent: Montreal Canadiens (15-10-5 35 pts)
Road Record (7-4-3)
Site: XcelEnergy Center, St.Paul, MN
Time: 7:00PM CT
TV: Fox Sports North (FSN)
Last season results:
11/2 Canadiens 3 @ Wild 6
11/9 Wild 3 @ Canadiens 0
The Wild limp home to host the Canadiens tonight following their worst loss of the season a 7-2 drubbing in Edmonton on Friday night.
Montreal comes in on a three game win streak and have won four of their past five. A respectable 7-4-3 road record on top of the latest charge has the Canadiens inside the top eight in the Eastern Conference, while the Wild have fallen to 10th in the West.
It has been over four years since the Wild have lost to the Canadiens, winning the last seven times the clubs have met.
Luke Kunin will make his season debut tonight and will begin the game playing on the new Wild "kid" line with Joel Eriksson Ek and Jordan Greenway. Kunin has been playing well in Iowa after a sluggish start to the season coming back from his torn ACL he suffered late last season.
Kunin will initially not be used on either PP unit but will most likely see time on the PK.
Either way the infusion of some young legs and a new outlook could only be a positive for the Wild, who have struggled to put the puck in the net, and in their own end keeping their opponents off the board.
Bruce Boudreau has a dilemma facing him with Devan Dubnyk struggling and Alex Stalock not ready to assume the full time job. Either way this is a problem and with Kaapo Kahkonen playing well in Iowa, does he get a look.
I know that is not the plan by any stretch, but we all know what desperate times call for.
Tonight is another opportunity for the Wild to get back to playing Wild hockey. Discipline, attention to detail style hockey is what we knew about the Wild for the first six weeks of the season. Where did that go, and how do they find it again.
The Wild are not as bad as this current funk, but are they as good as they played the first month and a half? That is yet to be determined.
Projected Wild Lines:
Zucker-Staal-Granlund
Parise-Coyle-Niederreiter
Greenway-Eriksson Ek-Kunin
Foligno-Fehr-Briwn
Suter-Dumba
Brodin-Spurgeon
Seeler-Pateryn
Dubnyk
Stalock
It's always Hockey Day in the State of Hockey!
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