"It'll be a work in progress as far as our work-rest ratio," said Wild coach Dean Evason. "But it's something that we hope we'll be able to manage correctly."
Minnesota's power play, which despite its hot start continues to struggle, was a focal point at practice in hopes that it can get ignited in the near future.
"We have a template we want to use going forward, as far as our days off, but as we did on the road trip, we had a couple of complete days off. We're going to need it," Evason said. "We had a nice day [Saturday], we were out there, max, 35 minutes, worked 20 minutes maybe, but we were able to get some real quality stuff done as a far as a our pace, getting our legs motivated and obviously some work on the power play."
One bit of good news on the power play front is that Zach Parise and Kevin Fiala each snapped scoreless streaks to start the season in Friday's win.
Parise's second-period goal ended up being the game winner, while Fiala added a critical empty-net goal with under 90 seconds remaining.
The goals were the first point of the season for each player, and the hope is that getting those goose eggs off the stat sheet can help get both players into an offensive flow.
Parise and Fiala combined to score 21 power-play goals last season, while the rest of the Wild roster totaled 25 with the man advantage.
"It's always nice. Any time you get to get rid of the zeros is a good feeling," Parise said. "You look back at each game and you think, I felt good physically but you start to think you had an opportunity here and there, opportunities every game, so it's easy to get caught up in the numbers and stuff, but I've been through a lot longer droughts and a lot worse, so I guess it wasn't too big of a deal."
Minnesota played Friday night without the services of Nico Sturm and lost goaltender Cam Talbot to an undisclosed injury after the first period.
Both Talbot's and Sturm's status is unclear for Sunday. Neither practiced on Saturday, nor did defenseman Jonas Brodin, but the defenseman is expected to be available.
If Talbot can't go, Kaapo Kahkonen will draw his second start -- and third appearance -- in the past three games. He stopped 22 of 24 shots in a 3-2 win against the Anaheim Ducks on Monday and was a perfect 17 of 17 in 40 minutes of action Wednesday.
Former Wild goaltender Devan Dubnyk started Wednesday's game and made 25 saves. While Minnesota scored four times, the final two came with Dubnyk on the bench for the extra attacker.
If Dubnyk doesn't start, Martin Jones will get the nod. Jones has each of the Sharks' two victories this season, posting a 2-1-0 record to go with a 3.08 goals-against average and an .893 save percentage.
