In the heat of their on-ice battle in Italy last week, Team Sweden forward Joel Eriksson Ek barely noticed that he had Minnesota Wild teammates wearing red, white and blue on the other side of the faceoff circles.
But when he saw and spoke with Matt Boldy, Brock Faber and Quinn Hughes during warmups before their game — eventually won by the Americans, 2-1, in overtime — it was a little bit of a strange feeling.
“I don’t think you really think about it once you start playing and once you get going, you’re just kind of so into the game,” Eriksson Ek said on Tuesday after the Wild’s practice at TRIA Rink. “But, yeah, seeing them before the game was a little bit weird.”
From the USA-Sweden clash at the Winter Games, optimistic Wild fans will remember Hughes’ overtime goal that propelled Team USA one step closer to their eventual gold medal. The more pessimistic Minnesota fans will recall a hard hit Eriksson Ek took in the third period of that game, which had him getting up slowly.
But on Tuesday, after flying home from Milan and getting a few days away from the rink, the Wild’s second-line center said he is physically fine heading into the re-start of the NHL season on Thursday at Colorado. While head coach John Hynes will be back at practice on Wednesday, the travel plans for Boldy, Faber and Hughes are more up in the air — although the trio is expected to re-join the team in Denver in time to face the Avalanche.
They were pictured celebrating with the rest of the men’s team at a Miami nightclub on Monday, and several were planning to attend the State of the Union address at the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday, after being invited by President Donald Trump in a postgame phone call.
“The (Americans) probably injured themselves partying more than on the ice,” Wild forward Marcus Foligno joked. “But I think it’s great. The first thing I did was went to Ekky and said, ‘How you feeling? Everything good?’ And he said everything’s great, so that’s a huge plus for us.”
Wild defenseman Jonas Brodin, who had surgery for a lower body injury last month and missed playing for Team Sweden in the Olympics as a result, skated on his own before practice on Tuesday but his timeline to return remains unclear.
“He’s still quite some time away, but at least he can get out there with us now,” said Wild assistant coach Jack Capuano, who has been running practices while Hynes has been away. “The surgery went well. Non-contact, then we’ll just assess it nice and slowly and move forward.”
Briefly
Offered congratulations on his home country, Norway, winning the medal count in Milan/Cortina, Wild forward Mats Zuccarello responded with a prideful smile.
“We do that every Olympics,” said Zuccarello, who skated for the Norwegians in the 2010 and 2014 Winter Games. “Then everyone forgets about it, and four years later everyone is surprised when we do it again.”
Indeed, a check of the year-by-year medal count shows the Norwegians with either the most medals overall or the most gold medals, or both, for every Winter Olympics dating back to 2014.
Norway, which has a national population that is slightly smaller than that of Minnesota, is a world power in skiing and sliding sports, but the nation failed to qualify for the 2022 and 2026 Olympic hockey tournaments.
In stark contrast to the on-ice success of Scandinavian neighbors Sweden and Finland, Norway lags behind in hockey. Zuccarello is one of just three Norwegians to play in the NHL this season.
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