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Kirill Kaprizov will return to Wild lineup Saturday against Blues

dane mizutani, pioneer press
·3 min read

After missing the past month — 13 games in total — star forward Kirill Kaprizov will return to the the Wild lineup on Saturday night against the St. Louis Blues.

It comes at a perfect time with the Wild having dropped three straight games for the first time since the bye week a couple of months ago.

“Very excited to be back,” Kaprizov said. “It’s been a while.”

No kidding. As difficult as it was for the Wild to be patient with their best player not on the ice, Kaprizov said it was even tougher on him. He estimated that before this recent stretch the longest he’s ever had to sit out with an injury is a week and a half at most.

“It wasn’t very fun at all,” Kaprizov said, adding that he spent most of his time “chilling” as he waited to be cleared. “Very much looking forward to getting back.”

Looking back on the March 8 win over the Winnipeg Jets and the play that caused the injury in the first place, Kaprizov doesn’t seem to have much issue with it. He emphasized that while he thinks it was unfortunate how Jets defenseman Logan Stanley landed directly on top of him, he doesn’t think it was a dirty play in and of itself.

“The heat of the moment,” Kaprizov said. “Maybe I didn’t position myself correctly. Maybe he wanted to play the body a certain way and I positioned myself incorrectly. It’s a hockey play. Things like that happen.”

After skating on his own last weekend, Kaprizov practiced with the Wild for the first time this week. Asked what signaled that Kaprizov was ready for a game, coach Dean Evason joked, “That he said he’s ready.”

It started to become increasingly clear that Kaprizov’s return was imminent on the recent road trip. He met with the coaching staff on Thursday morning before the Wild’s road game against the Pittsburgh Penguins. It was at that time that Evason was fairly confident Kaprizov was going to play the next game.

In other words, Kaprizov is not rushing back in response to the Wild classifying Joel Eriksson Ek as week-to-week after he injured himself blocking a shot in the most recent loss.

“With good news comes bad news,” Kaprizov said “We’re really going to miss him in the lineup.”

It’s unclear how long Eriksson Ek will be out. The hope is that Kaprizov will provide a major boost in the meantime. No doubt his 39 goals and 35 assists will help.

Though the Wild managed to get by without Kaprizov for the most part — they finished 7-3-3 in his absence — they need to stop the bleeding after hitting a rough patch.

Not that Kaprizov is too concerned with the recent losing streak.

“Very excited for the way the team played while I wasn’t there,” Kaprizov said. “Personally, I wasn’t super concerned about the losses, and I think we’re going up pick it up right where we left off.”

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