NASHVILLE, Tenn. — The Minnesota Wild’s work in the season’s first six months put them in the playoffs. On Saturday, they ran up against a Nashville Predators team desperate to get there.
Minnesota mounted a strong third-period push at Bridgestone Arena but in the end fell just short, as the Predators stayed alive in the Western Conference race with a 2-1 win.
Michael McCarron, playing back in Nashville for the first time, had the Wild’s lone goal as they fell to 0-2 on their current three-game road trip. Jesper Wallstedt, making the 34th start of his rookie season, had 20 saves in the loss.
Wild forward Marcus Foligno went to the penalty box for an extended stay early in the first after a four-minute high sticking penalty. The Wild killed three minutes of it, allowing two shots, and then Nashville was whistled for slashing, negating the rest.
With Wallstedt under duress and sliding from post to post, Preds star Steven Stamkos gave Nashville the game’s first lead with a wraparound that was a half-second quicker than Quinn Hughes’ attempt to deflect the puck.
The Predators, who are in desperate need of points if they are to cash in on their slim playoff chances, kept up the attack on the Minnesota net in the middle frame, with former Gophers standout Matthew Wood zipping a loose puck past Wallstedt to double the Nashville lead.
The Wild finally answered with just over 13 minutes to play when McCarron scored his second goal in a Wild sweater, and his first against the team that traded him away in early March. Minnesota got a power play later in the third and managed two shots on Predators goalie Justus Annunen but failed to tie the game.
Annunen finished with 21 saves for Nashville, which remains one point back of Los Angeles in the race for the final wild card spot in the West. The Wild were whistled for a pair of too-many-men-on-the-ice penalties, including one with 1:38 remaining and Wallstedt on the bench for an extra attacker.
With the Wild locked into their first round matchup with the Stars, and almost mathematically certain to open the playoffs in Dallas, coach John Hynes juggled his lines for Saturday’s game to give some pre-playoffs rest to a few regulars.
Captain Jared Spurgeon got a day off from his blue line duties, with Daemon Hunt slotting in for the first time since March 1. Top-line winger Mats Zuccarello and second line center Joel Eriksson Ek also had a day off on Saturday. Bobby Brink and Nico Sturm came in to take those spots, with Sturm in the lineup for the first time since being a healthy scratch for the previous eight games.
The Wild conclude their regular season road schedule on Monday evening with a visit to St. Louis. It will be a bookend to the start of the regular season, when they visited the Blues for a 5-0 win on Oct. 9.
Briefly
John Hynes was head coach of the Predators for three-plus seasons. Dismissed at the end of the 2022-23 season, he took over the Wild seven months later. After nearly a half-dozen games on the visiting bench in Nashville, and with his family relocated from Tennessee to Minnesota, he said before the game that facing the Predators has become fairly routine.
“It’s a couple years, you’re with a new team, been with a new team for a while now,” said Hynes, who came into Saturday’s game with a 6-3-1 Wild record versus his former employer. “I think it’s always different when you, whether it’s a player or a coach, come back for the first or second time. But the more you do it, the more it just becomes an opponent’s arena.”