Wild Warmup: Minnesota vs. Calgary

The essentials

The Wild Warmup is presented by Bryant Heating and Cooling
ST. PAUL -- Two days closer to the end of the NHL's regular season and little has changed in the Wild's pursuit of home ice in the First Round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
Both Minnesota and its opponent, the St. Louis Blues, lost in regulation on Tuesday night, which means each is tied for second place in the Central Division with 109 points.
The Wild is the team that controls its own destiny, however. Minnesota owns a game in hand, a contest which will be exhausted on Thursday night when it hosts the Calgary Flames at Xcel Energy Center.
Should Minnesota be victorious on Thursday, both the Wild and Blues would head into season finales on Friday night, with Minnesota needed only a single point (or a Blues loss of any kind) to assure itself of a Game 1 contest at Xcel Energy Center.
Lose to the Flames and the Wild will need help on Friday; should the two clubs finished tied in the standings, it's the Blues that would own the tiebreaker based on their number of regulation victories.
The hope is that the Wild don't regret a potential missed opportunity on Tuesday night, when it lost 5-3 on home ice to the Arizona Coyotes, the second-worst team in the National Hockey League.
"Maybe a good team for us to get two points here trying to get a little lead on St. Louis," Wild goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury said following the Arizona loss on Tuesday. "That's why it's a little more sour to lose that one."
The loss snapped a five-game winning streak, a 10-game point streak and a 13-game home point streak for the Wild, which led 1-0 early but could never build on its lead.
Arizona would tie the game late in the second, then score a pair of goals early in the third period to take a two goal lead.
After the Wild scored twice in a span of 24 seconds, the Coyotes tallied a power-play goal and an empty-net goal to salt away the game and a 10-game losing streak.
"It's frustrating. We know we can be so much better," said Wild forward Joel Eriksson Ek. "We have to learn from this and at the same time, we know it's a playoff [series] coming, we can't let this get [us] down too much. But we for sure are not happy with how we played."
But the challenge won't get any easier on Thursday.
Calgary has already wrapped up the Pacific Division crown and currently sits one point clear of the Wild and Blues for the second-most in the Western Conference behind Colorado.
Coming off a 5-4 overtime win in Nashville on Tuesday night, the Flames have at least a point in six consecutive games and have throttled the Wild in each of their only matchups so far this season.
The former Northwest Division rivals played consecutive games to end February and begin March, with the Flames winning 7-3 at the Saddledome, before securing a 5-1 victory a few nights later in St. Paul.
Calgary has nothing to play for; its lead in the Pacific is more than secure and it has no bearing whatsoever on whom it will play in the First Round when it commences next week.
But coach Darryi Sutter doesn't seem like a man who will have his team take their foot off the gas. Indeed, the Flames pushed until the final second in Nashville on Tuesday, tying the game with 0.1 seconds left on the clock in regulation before winning in OT.
The goal scorer, Matthew Tkachuk is one of two 100-plus point men on the Flames roster, with Tkachuk's 41 goals tied with Elias Lindholm for the club lead. Johnny Gaudreau leads the team with 74 assists and 113 points and is just one goal away from his first career 40-goal campaign.
Gaudreau's point total ranks third in the NHL behind Connor McDavid (122) and Jonathan Huberdeau (115). Minnesota's Kirill Kaprizov (105) is sixth while Tkachuk is seventh.
Flames goaltender Jacob Markstrom is third in the league with a 2.21 goals-against average and fifth with a .922 save percentage. His nine shutouts are two more than any other goaltender in the NHL. He's 37-15-8 on the year in 62 games, all starts, establishing new career bests in every category.