ST. PAUL, Minn. – Let’s be blunt: If there was ever an opponent for the Pittsburgh Penguins to get season-long disappointment Tristan Jarry back on track, the schedule cooperated fully Sunday with a date against the offensively-feeble Minnesota Wild.
Well, guess what?
Facing a goalie who cleared waivers in January and hadn’t started in the NHL since Jan. 14, a goalie who gave up 13 goals in his last three AHL starts and entered Sunday with a 3.31 goals-against average and .884 save percentage in 22 NHL games, and going up against a 28th-place team leading the league in five-on-five goals against, the Wild scored no five-on-five goals on 30 shots and 75 attempted shots in a 3-1 loss to open a seven-game homestand.
Absolutely brutal.
One game after dramatically outplaying the Canucks over the last 40 minutes and also losing 3-1, the sinking Wild have now lost five of seven games and suddenly find their playoff position on unfirm ground.
They have a seven-point lead on ninth-place Vancouver, which had played two fewer games heading into Sunday night’s game against Dallas. If the Canucks win, they’ll again leap Calgary for the final wild-card spot and the Wild’s playoff lead over the Flames will be six points.
“This is the crucial time of year,” veteran Marcus Foligno said. “We’re getting down to where there’s 18 games left, and we need some wins fast. You don’t want this thing getting out of hand. I’d be lying to you if (I said) we’re not thinking about it. We know we need some wins here to separate ourselves. So we got to just think about defensive hockey if we’re fighting to score right now.”
The Wild have lost two in a row since adding fourth-line right wing Justin Brazeau, who logged six shifts Sunday totaling 4 minutes, 10 seconds. He played two shifts after the first period and none in the third.
Coach John Hynes said this wasn’t so much about Brazeau as he just sensed not much was going on with the fourth line as a whole. So when the Wild were chasing after Evgeni Malkin’s second-period power-play goal, he shortened the bench or double-shifted players instead.
To Hynes’ point, Brazeau’s linemates Yakov Trenin and Devin Shore only played 7:00 and 5:39, respectively.
The Wild also added veteran Gustav Nyquist last week in a trade for a 2026 second-round pick. He has no points and six shots in four games, and the 35-year-old has definitely lost a lot of his early-career speed.
After Sidney Crosby beat old pal Marc-Andre Fleury on a knuckler for a 2-0 lead midway through the third, it was tough sledding for a Wild team crippled by injuries to Kirill Kaprizov, Joel Eriksson Ek and Jonas Brodin.
“I feel like I’m going to hear about this for a long time,” Fleury said of being scored on by Crosby and Malkin in his final career start against the Penguins. “(Crosby) still talks about his goal in juniors against me. (His goal was) lucky, too. Missed his shot and it hit (Brock Faber’s) stick. It’s like, ‘Are you kidding me, this guy?’
“I don’t know, I still played for the win. That is what matters, right? That is what pissed me off the most, losing that game.”
Only two Penguins have scored against Marc-Andre Fleury so far…
Crosby and Malkin 🥲 pic.twitter.com/jktH2jVaR8
— B/R Open Ice (@BR_OpenIce) March 9, 2025
Ryan Hartman scored a power-play goal off a four-on-one with 5:06 to go, but Crosby outraced Faber to a puck in the neutral zone for an empty-net goal. It was the second game in a row Faber, who has played heavy minutes and is one of three healthy Wild players who didn’t recently get a long break because of the 4 Nations Face-Off, couldn’t outrace an opponent to deny an empty-netter.
The vibes aren’t good right now. The Wild haven’t played well since early January and even though the schedule is ideal with a bunch of home games the rest of the way, the Wild are a completely unacceptable 14-14-1 at Xcel Energy Center and owners of the league’s worst home-ice penalty kill. It only gets harder with the Avs coming in next Tuesday night.
“My frienda, sorry” 😂🫶 pic.twitter.com/2PwvxEVvb6
— Pittsburgh Penguins (@penguins) March 10, 2025
Malkin’s goal was the height of frustration after the Wild played perfectly for the first 1:45 of the kill but then couldn’t get a clear and gave up a goal with three seconds left in the advantage. Way too often lately, the Wild do all the right things only to have one lapse that leads to a power-play goal in the waning seconds of a kill.
“We wish (penalty kills were) 1:50,” cracked Foligno. “I mean, honestly, it’s getting ridiculous.”
Hynes voiced frustration with Faber for not using Freddy Gaudreau to get a clear before Malkin’s goal.
“We have the puck, we gotta share that puck and get a clear, the puck’s gotta get out,” Hynes said. “That’s just the detail and finishing the job on it, and that’s the difference sometimes of getting the complete kill and not. Tonight that’s the part that bothers me the most is we did a good job on the kill. We had everything right.
“They came in on the last entry. We had opportunities to clear it or share it, meaning pop it to someone else and clear it, we don’t do it and then it winds up in the back of your net. That’s the detail on the kill. That’s the difference between being a good penalty kill and one that gets leaky goals at the end of a kill.”
Evgeni Malkin beats Fleury in tight for a power play goal, putting the Penguins into the lead!#LetsGoPens pic.twitter.com/zAIZ3Y8bCe
— Hockey Daily 365 l NHL Highlights & News (@HockeyDaily365) March 9, 2025
The Wild did get the power-play goal from Hartman, but their power play went 1-for-6 and there was no bigger time to come through on the man advantage than during a 0-0 game in the second period when Hartman drew a double minor.
The Wild had no shots in the first 3:16 of the two power plays and were stationary, on the perimeter and kept putting passes in teammates’ skates. Hynes said sarcastically they were trying to pass the puck into the net.
In desperate need of somebody to step up in Kaprizov’s absence, Matt Boldy continues to absolutely not.
Less than a month shy of his 24th birthday, the $7 million-a-year player whom Bill Guerin said before the season was capable of 50 goals and 50 assists is plain and simple not getting it done.
In the last 44 games, Boldy has gone one stretch in which he didn’t score in 16 of 18 games, and another stretch in which he didn’t score in 18 of 20. In his first 20 games, he scored 11 goals and 22 points with a 15.3 shooting percentage and 72 shots (3.6 per game). In his past 44, he has scored 10 goals (two on the power play) and 32 points with a 6.6 shooting percentage and 151 shots (3.4 per game).
Sunday, Boldy had six shots and another nine attempted with nothing to show for it.
“Yeah, it’s just not going in. It sucks,” Boldy said. “I thought the more I shoot it, I think, get the quantity up, more chances to score. Being able to make plays and getting more to the net and just kind of getting through it. It’s the only way to go. It sucks. You wanna be on the ice, you wanna make a difference. You help the team win in every way, and you need to find a way to score a goal.”
Hynes says the process in Boldy’s game has been good, and that’s all you can ask.
“He’s shooting. He’s getting looks. He’s getting opportunities,” Hynes said. “He’s getting to the inside of the ice. I think he’s triggering the puck when he has the opportunity to do it and that’s what we need from him and he’s gotta continue to do that. He’s gotta continue to stay with it and there’s no other way to go about it.
“Are there other things we could possibly do? Yeah, we’ll look at some of those things. But as far as Matt’s concerned, I think he’s playing the game that he needs to play and I think if he stays with it, and I’m confident he will, then he’s going to be able to produce.”
The big concern is Kaprizov, Eriksson Ek and Brodin won’t be back anytime soon. None of the three have even started skating.
Since Jan. 9, the Wild — who in mid-December were the No. 1 team in the NHL — rank 28th with 20 standings points, 32nd at 2.26 goals per game, 24th with 3.22 goals against per game, 17th with a 22 percent power play and 30th with a 66.8 percent penalty kill.
“Sometimes you can see the guys getting a little more mad,” Fleury said. “Earlier in the season, we were more relaxed and loose, right? When you score you get relaxed. But guys are working and they are trying. It will come, for sure. They have shown it all year. It will come back.”
Ryan Hartman finally breaks through on the power play pic.twitter.com/7QWHludwY6
— CJ Fogler 🫡 (@cjzero) March 9, 2025
The Wild better hope so, because this would be an epic collapse – injuries or not. And remember, if the Wild miss the playoffs, they traded a top-five protected first-round pick to the Columbus Blue Jackets for David Jiricek, who has played six times and been scratched four games in a row since getting called up after Brodin’s latest injury.
“We just gotta put the puck in the back of the net,” Foligno said. “I mean, work ethic’s there, and chances are there. We just gotta do a better job of putting it in.
“We gotta do it together. Can’t pout, can’t go your separate ways. We gotta stick together. We’re in this thing. And we can get it back on the tracks, so to speak. … It’s got to come. But just grinding these out, man. You got to stay low scoring and keep the goals out of your net if you’re fighting it. And there’ll come a time where bounces go our way.”
(Photo of Brock Faber breaking his stick: Nick Wosika / Imagn Images)
