Wild practice invaded by Kraken

The Wild have moved their home morning skates from Xcel Energy Center to TRIA Rink, about six blocks east in downtown St. Paul, this season.

Typically, both teams have skates at 10:30 a.m. (home) and 11:30 a.m. (away) local time at the NHL rink on game days, but coach John Hynes said Thursday there are benefits to keeping them at the team’s practice rink, most notably larger training facilities and largely unlimited ice time.

“The facilities are bigger, they’re larger, they’re more beneficial for the players,” Hyne said. “And when you look at the ice time … we’ve got as much time as we need for extra work or conditioning or goalie work that you don’t get at the game rink.”

Another issue, Hynes said Friday, is being able to work on things without the team they’re about to play in the same rink. But the Wild shared TRIA on Friday with the Seattle Kraken, Saturday’s opponent who practiced after the Wild, because of a Cody Johnson concert Friday night at the X.

During the Wild’s practice, Seattle players, coaches and trainers were stretching, jogging, lifting weights and playing sewer ball — hacky sack with a soccer ball — on the other side of the boards. And watching.

Asked if it bothered him that he had to run a full practice in front of the next night’s opponent, Hynes said, “There’s really nothing you’re doing in the practice today that’s going to be on it, but normally that usually is not the case.”

‘No over-reaction’

The Wild won their season opener on Thursday, 3-2 over Columbus at the X, in large part because of their second line — two goals, six points — and goaltender Filip Gustavsson, who stopped 31 of 33 shots.

The task Friday, Hynes said, was to focus on improving. The Wild have back-to-back games on Saturday and Sunday, and will finish October with seven consecutive road games. Last year, the Wild won their opener, then lost seven of their next nine games, part of a 5-10-2 start that had them chasing a playoff position — that they never caught — all season.

“I don’t think it’s (simply) you win a game and you enjoy it and you got two points,” Hynes said. “That’s what obviously matters the most, but it’s the mindset of, ‘Can we continue to get better? Can we not get loose? Can we come back to work the next day and be ready to grow our game again and do that, whether that’s a practice or that’s the game?’”

The second and fourth lines had strong games on Thursday, and the power play scored. But the third line struggled. On Friday, Hynes fielded questions about when he would get goaltenders Marc-Andre Fleury and Jesper Wallstedt into games and whether he is thinking about when rookie forward Liam Ohgren might get into a game.

“We did win the game. We did get two points,” he said. “We did play stretches of the hockey game that were really good. (Columbus) played stretches that were really good. So, there’s zero overreaction to it. We’ve just got to make sure we continue to get better.”

Briefly

Fleury seems likely to start in goal on Saturday, with Gustavsson back in net Sunday in Winnipeg. That would mean Tuesday in St. Louis is a possible date for Wallstedt’s first start. … Defenseman Declan Chisholm was back on the ice on Friday after missing a pair of practices, and Thursday’s game, because of an illness. As a result, Daemon Hunt was reassigned to AHL Iowa, and Wallstedt was recalled from Des Moines.

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