SUNRISE, Fla. – Six games into this season, it’s like we’re all watching Minnesota Wild bizarro world.
We’re not just talking about their six-game point streak or their six games in a row of scoring the game’s first goal. We’re not talking about the fact they haven’t trailed for a single second of regulation hockey at all this season, or even the fact that Tuesday night the Wild stepped onto the ice where the Stanley Cup was paraded four months ago and ended up chasing a star goalie and easily beating a team of champions.
No, what was further on display in Tuesday’s 5-1 win over Sergei Bobrovsky and the Florida Panthers is the sense that Mats Zuccarello and Kirill Kaprizov have switched roles.
“He likes to shoot this year more,” Kaprizov said.
Kaprizov may have been kidding, but there’s no doubt six games in, the Wild’s three-time 40-goal scorer has been more playmaker than goal-scorer and the Wild’s king of playmaking has been more shooter than passer.
“About time,” Zuccarello quipped.
Zuccarello leads the 4-0-2 Wild with four goals — two more than Kaprizov.
Karprizov leads the Wild with eight assists — five more than Zuccarello.
Hey, as defenseman Jake Middleton said, “it’s working.”
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Tuesday night, as the Wild extended their season-opening point streak to their longest since seven in a row in 2008-09 (6-0-1), Kaprizov and Zuccarello teamed up for a scintillating goal that was the perfect response to the Panthers trimming a 3-0 deficit to 3-1 on Sam Bennett’s net-front, driving slam dunk of Carter Verhaeghe’s pass in the second period.
“That team is a streaky and good team at home,” Zuccarello said. “If they get one, usually they get a couple more. So it was good to get the momentum back.”
As the Wild did all night, they turned great defense into a quick counterattack. Middleton, who tied his career high with three assists, fed Kaprizov to the left of his buddy, fellow Russian Sergei Bobrovsky.
If the pass had been on Kaprizov’s stick, it would have been a one-timer goal. Instead, it went off Kaprizov’s skate. But Kaprizov hustled to corral the puck again, then executed a give-and-go with Zuccarello that ended with Kaprizov patiently skating around the net. He pulled Bobrovsky out of his crease and teed up Zuccarello for an open-netter.
“It’s so much fun when they’re just dancing around there, passing to each other, finding each other,” goalie Filip Gustavsson said. “They’re unbelievable.”
Zuccarello ➡️ Kaprizov ➡️ Zuccarello 🚨
4-1 #mnwild pic.twitter.com/q1MEhJfEvo— Spoked Z (@SpokedZ) October 22, 2024
What was hilarious is Zuccarello never moved a muscle after initially passing to Kaprizov. He just stayed put and waited for Kaprizov, seemingly knowing the puck would eventually make its way back.
“I see there’s a guy going around so I’m kind of waiting for it,” Zuccarello said. “If (Kaprizov) doesn’t pass to me there, it’s going to be a tough day (Wednesday) for him because I’m open.”
Middleton got a kick out of the whole sequence because he got the second assist on the goal, though his pass to Kaprizov occurred 10 seconds before the eventual tally.
“I wasn’t sure if there was a time limit on getting a second assist or anything, but if there was, I think I would have passed that threshold,” Middleton kidded. “That was an easy one. Just pass it to those guys and let them take care of it. It’s funny watching Kirill be the passer so far and Zuccy the shooter. Whatever keeps those two happy and in sync, I think the rest of the guys on the team would appreciate that as well.”
One player who really appreciates it is Marco Rossi, the lucky player who gets to center those two.
Rossi scored the game’s first goal 22 seconds before Marcus Johansson’s eventual winner. Rossi has goals in three straight games and points in five straight games, both career highs.
With his back facing Bobrovsky, Rossi pulled off one heck of a redirection after Kaprizov whistled a pass between defenseman Aaron Ekblad’s legs. Rossi thinks Kaprizov intended to pass to a pinching Middleton, but he got his stick on the pass in the slot and Bobrovsky had no way of telling where the puck was coming from through traffic.
“I’m just trying to play with a lot of confidence, and it’s been good so far,” Rossi said.
Marco Rossi’s redirect finds twine for his third goal of the season 🚨#mnwild pic.twitter.com/TKDA7V14zZ
— Hockey Daily 365 l NHL Highlights & News (@HockeyDaily365) October 22, 2024
Remember, Rossi opened training camp centering Marcus Foligno and Yakov Trenin with Ryan Hartman getting the initial look between Kaprizov and Zuccarello. Coach John Hynes vowed to give looks to Rossi and Joel Eriksson Ek, too, and when they broke camp, Rossi won the prime gig.
“Of course, you have individual goals for your season,” Rossi said. “But lines, you don’t really think too much because you always trust the coach and just want to play wherever he puts you in and just try to make the best out of it.”
He sure has so far.
“I really liked that line tonight,” Hynes said. “I just thought that the way that they managed the puck themselves, obviously skilled players and guys that want to be able to make plays, I thought that they found the times when they were able to do that, but when they didn’t have those opportunities, they didn’t force plays. When you really look at it, that allows them to be able to get into the offensive situations that they made some plays in tonight.”
The same could be said about the entire team Tuesday.
Gustavsson had to make a couple great stops, but as even he said after the game, the Panthers didn’t have too many clear chances after cutting the deficit to 3-1. He made 24 saves to improve to 4-0-1 this season. He has only allowed seven goals in those five starts.
The Wild played well defensively against an offensive juggernaut of a team with a sensational power play. But the best way to extinguish a lethal power play is to stay out of the box, and the Wild took no penalties for only the seventh time on the road in franchise history and 13th time overall.
“We talk a lot about this before and we just try to do better, don’t take bad penalties and try (to be) more clean,” Kaprizov said. “Good saves our goalie did all the time and a lot of blocked shots and play smart in D-zone.”
That’s the message Hynes delivered to the Wild after the game. There’s a reason the Wild’s streak of 360 regulation minutes without trailing to start this season is the second-longest run in league history. They’re playing well with the lead, with Eriksson Ek and Matt Boldy also scoring against the Panthers. They’re getting elite goaltending from Gustavsson. They’ve been disciplined. And they’re defending admirably, from their defensive-zone and neutral-zone structure to the willingness to block shots.
“I thought we had some real strong maturity in our game coming into this building,” Hynes said. “Obviously the competitive level, it’s got to be a game where you have to win the hard areas, wall plays, net fronts. You have to manage the puck really well because they’re such a strong forecheck team.
“I thought we did a really good job of that. I thought our play without the puck was really strong, but I think we took a step — a big step — in the right direction just managing the puck the way you need to when there’s no ice to play in.”
Zuccarello did collect an assist to become the fastest player in Wild history to 200 assists with the club (330 games). And Kaprizov, who has five multi-point games in the six he has played this season, recorded his 36th career multi-assist outing to move into a tie with Mikael Granlund and Pierre-Marc Bouchard for the fourth-most in franchise history.
But it’s Zuccarello’s team-leading four goals that is most surprising.
“Usually I have four goals until Christmas, so it’s better now,” Zuccarello said.
(Photo: Carmen Mandato / Getty Images)
