With Minnesota Wild stars like Kirill Kaprizov, Matt Boldy, Quinn Hughes and Brock Faber getting their first taste of big-time hockey at past World Junior Championships, the local NHL club was in full support of St. Paul and Minneapolis landing one of the planet’s largest international hockey events when it was awarded two years ago.

The downside, for the Wild, was turning over their locker room, and their home rink, to the best young stars from 10 nations. As a result, the Wild boarded a northbound plane before sunrise on Saturday morning, and they won’t return to the State of Hockey for two weeks.

Some coaches would look at this as a daunting challenge. Wild coach John Hynes is taking an optimistic approach.

“I think you can look at it two ways. You can try to take advantage of it, or you can look at it in a different way,” Hynes said, speaking to reporters at Canada Life Centre in Winnipeg following the Wild’s Saturday morning skate.

The seven-game road trip that began Saturday evening in Winnipeg is the third time in franchise history that the Wild have played seven consecutive games away from St. Paul, and the first time that they will not be returning to Minnesota at any point during the voyage.

After the World Juniors gold medal has been awarded and all of the red, white and blue bunting has been taken down, the Wild’s next home game will be two weeks from now, when the New York Islanders visit Grand Casino Arena on Saturday, Jan. 10. But Hynes said they are determined to make the best of time in Manitoba, Nevada, California and Washington.

“We have seven games in this trip. I feel like we have some time where we have some practice days, we have some off days, staying in some different types of hotels. So I think that’s going to be good,” he said. “Our group, I think they do well together, so I think that always helps when you have a team that’s really cohesive, that likes to spend time together on the road.”

With the NHL’s prohibition on any team activities – including travel – on Dec. 24, 25 and 26, Saturday was shaping up to be one of the more interesting travel days the Wild will have this season. They left MSP before 7 a.m. for the one-hour flight to Winnipeg, staying at a downtown hotel, but only during the day. Following Saturday night’s game, they were scheduled to pack up and leave for their next road game, in Las Vegas on Monday, and were expecting to check into their hotel there sometime after 2 a.m.

After a lousy October that saw Minnesota win just three of its first dozen games, the Wild were red hot in November and December, reaching 50 points before Christmas for the first time in franchise history. Still, they were 0-1-1 in their last two games before the break, and Hynes admitted that with the long road trip looming, perhaps the three day break came at the right time.

“That stretch right before Christmas for us was very difficult,” Hynes said. “So I think just the freshness of having a few days off is good. But the urgency to get back to winning and coming out of the break on this road trip is something we want to really try to take advantage of.”

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