The Wild Warmup is presented by Bryant Heating and Cooling
SEATTLE -- For the first time, the Wild will play the NHL's 32nd team, the Seattle Kraken on Thursday night at Climate Pledge Arena.
It is the first of three meetings this season, and the first of two in the next three weeks in the Pacific Northwest.
The game Thursday evening marks the second of a three-game road trip for Minnesota which commenced in Vancouver on Tuesday night with a 3-2 Wild victory.
For the first time this season, Minnesota scored the first goal of the game. It never trailed in the contests, as the Wild extended its lead to 2-0 and 3-1 before closing out the victory. Mats Zuccarello, Jonas Brodin and Matt Dumba scored goals for the Wild, who improved to 5-1-0 on the season.
Tweet from @mnwildScribe: It���s Rink Report LIVE from Seattle as @WildJoeRadio and I preview #mnwild and Kraken from the awesome Climate Pledge Arena. https://t.co/PVuerqWFek
"First time this year. We want to do that more often. It's not the greatest recipe always chasing," Dumba said. "We talked about that before in the locker room, so hopefully we have that all situated."
UPDATE: Minnesota will be without Zuccarello and Pitlick on Thursday after they were placed on the COVID-19 protocol list. Connor Dewar, Kyle Rau and Jon Lizotte were recalled from Iowa, and Dewar, who played his junior hockey nearby for the Everett Silvertips, is expected to make his NHL debut.
Lizotte, a Grand Forks native and former St. Cloud State Husky, is in his fourth season of pro hockey and would also be making his NHL debut if he scratches into the lineup.
Goaltender Cam Talbot stopped 22 shots to move to 5-0-0 on the year, the best start of his NHL career. Talbot is just the second goaltender in franchise history to begin the season with five consecutive wins, joining Manny Fernandez, who started the 2002-03 season with six-straight wins.
Seattle earned its first-ever win on home ice Tuesday night with a 5-1 victory against the Montreal Canadiens. The win came on the heels of a 4-2 loss to the Canucks here last Saturday in the first game at Climate Pledge Arena, which didn't even host a game in the preseason.
Entering the day Wednesday, 19 different Wild players had tallied at least one point, which was tied for second-most in the NHL behind St. Louis (20).
But Seattle isn't far behind, as 18 different Kraken have found the scoresheet through the first handful of games.
Jared McCann leads that bunch with seven points, including three goals. Brandon Tanev has a team-high five goals, his only points of the season. Tanev has a pair of two-goal games among the first seven contests, including two tallies versus Montreal.
Mark Giordano, who was named the Kraken's first captain in team history earlier this month, has one goal and four points.
Philipp Grubauer has seen a bulk of the action in goal, starting six of the first seven games. He's 2-3-1 with a 3.29 goals-against average and an .883 save percentage, but is coming off his best outing of the season so far when he stopped 24 of 25 shots in the win over Montreal.
