Wild Warmup: Minnesota vs. Colorado

The essentials

The Wild Warmup is presented by Bryant Heating and Cooling
For the final time during the regular season, the Wild will play the Colorado Avalanche on Wednesday night at Xcel Energy Center.
The game marks the eighth and final matchup between the long-time division rivals, the first such series the Wild will complete this season.
Colorado has won five of the seven games thus far, including each of the past three games. The Avs won 5-4 in St. Paul on Monday night, building a three-goal lead into the second intermission before weathering a late Minnesota rally.
With zero games remaining against the Avalanche following the game on Wednesday, Minnesota's opportunities to catch the first-place Avalanche will dwindle if it can't find a way to get two points in the finale. Colorado begins the day Wednesday leading the WIld by eight points in the standings; Minnesota has one game in hand.
But even more than the standings, the Wild is hoping to prove that it can have success against a team that it could bump into again if it makes the postseason.
Wild coach Dean Evason, however, continues to preach a one-game mantra and won't let the club look too far beyond that.

"We have a game to play [on Wednesday] and that's our focus and that's it, we're playing against the Colorado Avalanche," Evason said. "Whoever we play the next night, then we want to get engaged and play the same way. But we're looking forward to see how we respond. We responded well to them in different situations earlier in the year when we had these back-to-back situations, so we need to see our group do that again."
For the most part, the Wild put forth a solid effort in the game on Monday. It led 1-0 after one period and played a solid third period as well. But it was a lackluster second period, where Colorado scored four goals and outshot the Wild by a 20-5 margin where the game went off the rails.
"After the second period, we all came in and we all knew what we had to do," said Wild forward Ryan Hartman. "That was our game plan in the first period, to play them hard. And we didn't play them hard in the second period. We made it easy on them and we kinda kicked ourselves after the second, talked about how to play them and guys pushed back and we made it a lot harder for them in the third period."
Minnesota will get some reinforcements back from illness on Wednesday as forward Zach Parise is expected to return to the lineup following a stint on the COVID-19 protocol list.
Parise has missed the past seven games, but has been on the ice with the team the past few days in an effort to get back into playing shape.
Nick Bjugstad is questionable after sustaining a potential injury in a third-period fight on Monday. As of Tuesday morning, Evason indicated Bjugstad was still being evaluated.
The victory for the Avalanche on Monday moved Colorado's point streak to 15 consecutive games. Five different players scored a goal for the Avs, including two by its explosive top line. Nathan MacKinnon, the Avs' leading scorer, had a goal and an assist in the game. Andre Burakovsky also had a goal and an assist.
Gabriel Landeskog had a goal and Mikko Rantanen had an assist. Defenseman Samuel Girard had two assists.
The four goals allowed by Philipp Grubauer marked just the third time this season (32 games) he had allowed four or more goals, and was the first time since he surrendered five goals on Feb. 24.
Grubauer has been outstanding, posting a 24-7-1 record to go with a 1.83 goals-against average and a .926 save percentage.