Another day, another city.
The Edmonton Oilers will kick off a three-game road trip on Wednesday evening at the Xcel Energy Center when they face the injury-riddled Minnesota Wild.
1. This will be the third and final meeting between the Oilers and Wild during the 2024-25 regular season. With a win on Wednesday, Edmonton can earn their first season series victory over Minnesota since the 2018-19 campaign.
The road team has won both games in this head-to-head so far. The Wild came into Edmonton in November and got five goals past Stuart Skinner in a 5-3 win. The Oilers responded a few weeks later with a 7-1 pounding in Minnesota.
Since the Wild entered the league in 2000-01, the Oilers have only won the season series against them five times. They did so in three consecutive seasons during Minnesota’s expansion years in 2000-01, 2001-02, and 2002-03, and didn’t beat them again until 2017-18 and 2018-19.
2. The Wild have been one of the NHL’s biggest surprises in 2024-25. After missing the playoffs with a 39-34-9 record last year, Minnesota sits second in the competitive Central Division with a 27-13-4 record at the middle point of the season.
The team is in a difficult salary cap situation after opting to buy out the contracts of Zach Parise and Ryan Suter a few years ago. The two veterans inked matching 13-year, $98 million contracts back on July 1, 2012 and their buyouts cost the Wild $7,371,795 against the cap in 2023-24 and 2024-25.
3. Despite not having much wiggle room to make changes to their roster in the off-season, the Wild have showed significant improvement under head coach John Hynes.
Minnesota fired Dean Evason after the team got out to a 5-10-4 start in 2023-24. They went 34-24-5 the rest of the way with Hynes behind the bench but it wasn’t enough to get the Wild into the playoffs after their slow start.
If the Wild are able to maintain this pace and make the playoffs despite having nearly $15 million in dead salary cap space, Hynes will be a strong bet to win the Jack Adams Award for the NHL’s best coach.
4. The Wild are dealing with a handful of injuries to key players right now and could be very shorthanded when they host the Oilers.
Kirill Kaprizov, who leads the team with 23 goals and 50 points, has been on the Injured Reserve since January 1 with a lower-body injury. Captain Jared Spurgeon has also been on the Injured Reserve since late December with a lower-body injury.
The Wild dropped their last game by a score of 4-1 to the Vegas Golden Knights on Sunday. Beyond having Kaprizov and Spurgeon on the IR, the team also played that game without top shutdown defender Jonas Brodin, puck-moving defenceman Brock Faber, and speedy forward Jakub Lauko.
According to Field Level Media in Minnesota, Hynes said Faber and Brodin would not play Wednesday against the Oilers and Spurgeon “probably” wouldn’t, but he left open the possibility that Kaprizov and Lauko could return.
Without Kaprizov available, the Minnesota has elevated Matt Boldy to the top forward line alongside Marco Rossi and Mats Zuccarello. Faber, Brodin, and Spurgeon rank first, second, and fourth on the Wild in average minutes played per game, so the team is relying on Jacob Middleton and Jon Merrill to take on more ice-time than usual.
5. The Oilers are in the midst of a difficult schedule but there’s a light at the end of the tunnel.
The team travelled from Seattle to Boston to Pittsburgh to Chicago and back to Edmonton for their last five games and went 4-1-0. They’ll play the Wild on Wednesday in Minnesota, the Avalanche in Colorado on Thursday, and then the Canucks in Vancouver on Saturday.
“It’s been a busy stretch here. A lot of travelling around,” captain Connor McDavid said after Monday’s win over the Los Angeles Kings at home. “A quick little pit stop here and back out on the road, so a big couple of games, but I like how we’re playing. We’ll be fine.”
After this three-game trip, the Oilers will have a six-game homestand in Edmonton that lasts for the latter part of January.
