The Minnesota Wild’s team plane headed to Silicon Valley and environs on Friday with a few notable empty seats. Mainstay defensemen Brock Faber, Jonas Brodin and Jared Spurgeon remain unavailable, and despite starting to skate on his own this week, superstar forward Kirill Kaprizov’s return from the lower body issue that has kept him sidelined since Christmas drags on.

After games in San Jose on Saturday and Vegas on Sunday, the Wild have two days off at home prior to a one-off visit by Edmonton midweek, so the likely thinking was to give key players a few more days of rest and recuperation, then look more closely into their availability upon returning to Minnesota.

John Hynes’ abbreviated first season in Minnesota was also a mess of injuries, and by the time the team was eliminated from the playoff picture last spring, the story had become one of who was missing rather than who was available. Off the ice, the story has been similar this year, but you will not hear any Wild players or their coach grousing about man-games lost on a team that has been the NHL’s best on the road, and remains solidly in contention for Western Conference and Central Division titles.

“That’s not an excuse we can make. We’ve shown we can play with guys (out of) the lineup, right?” said defenseman Jake Middleton – who missed close to a month himself with a hand injury earlier in the season – following a lopsided loss to Colorado this week. “So as much as you might want to think that or say that, that’s not the scenario for our team, especially just because we haven’t done it for the first half of the year where guys are stepping up and producing anytime we’ve been down a man.”

With an injury report that is longer than an airline luggage tag, it would be easy to give his charges a pass or get angry, but Hynes did not rant and rave, nor kick any garbage cans following the Colorado game, instead classifying it as closer than the score indicated and a valiant effort by players stepping up into increased workloads while the storm of bad health and bad luck rages around them.

“They capitalized on some mistakes we made, and we didn’t capitalize on the ones we had. But I didn’t feel in the game we were under siege, we were outplayed. It was one of those ones where we made some mistakes you don’t wanna make, but they wound up going in the net,” Hynes said, with a tip of the cap to the Avalanche for taking what they were given. “I liked the fact that the game was like that in the sense of…we weren’t under siege. I think you look at Grade A chances either way, pretty even from what I was looking at before I came in here. So it was one of those nights where we made mistakes, they went in. They made mistakes, we had looks that didn’t go in the net. But I think if we move on from this one and take those lessons out of it, and go into the weekend, I think we’ll be ready to go.”

For as much of a home ice advantage the Wild have at Xcel Energy Center, a comparison of their home and road records this season is noteworthy. Following the loss to Colorado, the Wild are 11-9-1 in their home rink, but head west owning a 15-3-3 mark away from home. That has been a key to their hot start, especially when much of October was spent traveling. In the immediate aftermath of the Colorado loss, there was a determination to keep working hard with what they have, and get back on the road – even shorthanded –to erase any lingering bad feelings.

“We love being on the road, it seems like,” forward Marcus Foligno said. “(It’s) a place that we’re familiar with, and to go into San Jose and play desperate and wanting to redeem ourselves.”

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