All was not perfect inside the visitors’ locker room in downtown Nashville on Wednesday morning, as the Wild held their final pregame skate before the NHL’s three-week break for the Olympics.

Veteran defenseman Jonas Brodin is not expected back on the ice until sometime in early March as he recovers from a lower body injury. The subsequent surgery to fix it caused him to miss the final 10 pre-break games and his chance to skate for Sweden in the Winter Games in Italy.

Two more Wild players – forward Marcus Foligno and goalie Jesper Wallstedt – missed the trip to Tennessee, staying back in Minnesota to rest as they dealt with an illness that also kept both out of Monday’s home win over Montreal.

On a more optimistic note, defenseman Daemon Hunt was back in the lineup, good to go, after missing much of the win over the Canadiens following a first-period puck to the throat.

Wild coach John Hynes, for his part, wasn’t looking past the Predators, who had split a pair of overtime games with the Wild in St. Paul earlier in the season. During the break, he tasked his players to think ahead to March and April, and the push to position themselves for what they envision as a playoff run of significance.

“We’ve talked with the guys I’d say maybe 10 games ago about having a good stretch and putting ourselves into a good position leading into the break,” Hynes said to the reporters at Bridgestone Arena. “But then also setting ourselves up coming out of the break with, whatever, 25 games left, that we’ve taken care of business. I think we’ve stayed focused and done a good job. We’ve won some games and got a lot of points in that stretch.”

The Wild faced off in Nashville having gone 7-1-1 in their previous nine games, and were buoyed by the recent return of veteran defenseman Zach Bogosian, who has missed 33 games this season, at three different times, due to injury. Bogosian played more than 16 minutes versus the Canadiens, and he was clearly happy to be back on the ice.

“I mean any time you get hurt as much as I have this year on unfortunate bounces, yeah it’s frustrating,” Bogosian admitted. “The guys supported me along the way and kept me positive. My family did the same thing, so it was a great support system for me. Just unfortunate but just work hard to get back.”

While Hynes has complimented the contributions on the blue line from younger players like Hunt and David Jiricek, he admitted that having a veteran presence like Bogosian available makes a difference in the every night lineup.

“He’s a big part of our team. He brings a big, strong, hard player to play against. He’s got a good veteran presence. He’s well respected within our team,” Hynes said of Bogosian, who has a goal and three assists in 24 games. “You respect the way he plays the game. He can help you when you have to defend hard, and his skating is an asset for him. He plays the game at a good pace, which allows him to defend well, but also break pucks out and be able to join the rush. So it’s good to have him back.”

Bogosian, 35, was the NHL’s third overall pick in the 2008 draft by the Atlanta Thrashers, who relocated to Winnipeg in 2011. He and Vancouver forward Evander Kane are the only players still active in the NHL who played in Atlanta during the league’s second of two failed attempts at a franchise there.

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By JACQUES BILLEAUD, SEJAL GOVINDARAO and MIKE BALSAMO, Associated Press

TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) — The search for “Today” show host Savannah Guthrie’s mother still had no suspect or person of interest Wednesday, authorities said, four days after she disappeared with signs of forced entry at her home in southern Arizona.

Investigators believe Nancy Guthrie was taken against her will over the weekend and Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos has said they don’t have credible information indicating Guthrie’s disappearance was targeted. Guthrie has limited mobility, and officials do not believe she left on her own. Nanos said she is of sound mind.

“Detectives continue to speak with anyone who may have had contact with Mrs. Guthrie,” the sheriff’s department said in a statement on social media Wednesday. “Detectives are working closely with the Guthrie family.”

Multiple media organizations reported receiving purported ransom notes Tuesday that they handed over to investigators. The sheriff’s department has said it’s taking the notes and other tips seriously but declined to comment further.

The Pima County sheriff and the Tucson FBI chief urged the public to offer tips during a news conference Tuesday. Nanos has said Guthrie needs daily medication and could die without it. Asked whether officials were looking for her alive, he said, “We hope we are.”

Authorities say Nancy Guthrie was last seen around 9:30 p.m. Saturday at her home in the Tucson area, where she lived alone, and she was reported missing midday Sunday. Someone at her church called a family member to say she was not there, leading family to search her home and then call 911.

DNA samples have been gathered and submitted for analysis as part of the investigation. “We’ve gotten some back, but nothing to indicate any suspects,” Nanos said.

There were signs of forced entry at Guthrie’s home, evidence of a nighttime kidnapping, and several personal items were still there, including Guthrie’s cellphone, wallet and car, according to a person familiar with the investigation, who was not authorized to publicly discuss details of the case and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of an anonymity. Investigators were reviewing surveillance video from nearby homes and information from area license plate cameras and analyzing local cellphone towers data.

Guthrie’s upscale Catalina Foothills neighborhood is quiet and mostly dark at night, lit mainly by car headlights and homes spaced far apart. Long driveways, front gates and desert plants provide a buffer from the winding streets. Saguaro cacti tower above her home’s roofline, and wispy trees partially block the view of the front door. Decorative streetlamps and prickly pear cacti dot the grassy front yard.

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Jim Mason, longtime commander of a search and rescue posse for the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, said desert terrain can make looking for missing people difficult. Sometimes it’s hard to peer into areas that are dense with mesquite trees, cholla cactus and other brush, he said. His group is based 175 miles north of Tucson, and is not involved in the search for Guthrie.

On the other side of the country, Victory Church in Albany, New York, said it’s offering a $25,000 reward for information that leads to finding Nancy Guthrie.

“Me and my wife, we watch Savannah every single morning. We’ve heard of her faith. We’ve heard of her mom’s faith. And she’s got such a sweet spirit,” Pastor Charlie Muller said.

For a third day Wednesday, “Today” opened with Nancy Guthrie’s disappearance, but Savannah Guthrie was not at the anchor’s desk. NBC Sports said Tuesday that Guthrie will not be covering the 2026 Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics “as she focuses on being with her family during this difficult time.”

The “Today” host grew up in Tucson, graduated from the University of Arizona and previously worked as a reporter and anchor at Tucson television station KVOA. Her parents settled in Tucson in the 1970s when she was a young child. The youngest of three siblings, she credits her mom with holding their family together after her father died of a heart attack at 49, when Savannah was just 16.

Billeaud reported from Phoenix and Balsamo from Washington. Associated Press writer Michael Hill in Albany, New York, contributed.

The Professional Women’s Hockey League was but a pipe dream in February 2022 when Kendall Coyne Schofield emphatically declared the urgency needed to address a fractured sport with unrealized potential.

“We need to push for visibility,” Coyne Schofield said then, choking back tears after the United States’ 3-2 gold-medal loss to Canada at the Beijing Winter Games. “We need to continue to fight for women’s hockey because (the status quo) is not good enough. It can’t end after the Olympic Games.”

Four years later, the women’s pro hockey landscape has undergone a seismic shift following the PWHL’s launch in 2023. The league’s presence and expanding success validates Coyne Schofield’s vision as the PWHL prepares for its international coming-out party at the Milan Cortina Games.

“I look at the growth of the women’s game, even from my first Olympics in 2014, and it’s been exponential,” said the 33-year-old captain of the two-time Walter Cup champion Minnesota Frost.

“To be a small part of that growth and just to live through that growth has been one of the greatest things I’ve been able to be a part of,” she added, in having played a key behind-the-scenes role in the league’s formation. “And I’m excited to see what happens after these Games.”

The PWHL is banking on it. The eight-team league, financially backed by Los Angeles Dodgers owner Mark Walter, is placing a major emphasis on marketing the PWHL through advertising spots during the two-week women’s tournament opening on Thursday.

The PWHL is well represented with 61 players among the 10 competing nations’ rosters, and most notably filling out a majority of the U.S. and Canadian teams.

The objective is twofold: Introducing PWHL fans to the elite level of Olympic play and luring casual viewers tuning in once every four years to the PWHL.

“Previous years, everybody falls in love with the Olympics. They hear stories about players, we have huge viewership numbers, and then it’s sort of like ‘What now?’” Hockey Hall of Famer and PWHL executive vice president Jayna Hefford said. “It’s a big opportunity to educate, direct back and make sure they know where they can find the players.”

Though much is being made of NHL players competing at the Olympics for the first time since 2014, these Games mark the debut of true professional women’s hockey players.

Their sport has gone through many iterations of so-called pro leagues, many in name only. Canadian Women’s Hockey League players weren’t paid a salary. A majority of the game’s elite eventually balked at competing in the National Women’s Hockey League, which later became the Premier Hockey Federation before being bought out to pave way for the PWHL.

The Olympics serve as the next launching point of growth for a league that began with six franchises and now has eight spanning the continent from Boston to the Pacific Northwest. More expansion is on the horizon, with the PWHL set to add up to four more teams next season.

Attendance is up. After soaring past the 1 million mark in just under two seasons in March, the PWHL has already surpassed 500,000 fans alone nearing the halfway point of its third season.

Challenges remain. Though every game is available on TV in each U.S. team’s market, and across America and much of the globe via YouTube, the PWHL lacks a national broadcaster in the U.S.

The PWHL also lags in international talent in its attempt to market itself as the world’s top league. Only 25 of the league’s 200-plus players this season come from outside North America. They include New York Sirens forward Krystyna Kaltounkova, who is from the Czech Republic and in June became the first European player to be chosen No. 1 in the draft.

Hefford is confident expansion, coupled with an Olympic tournament featuring PWHL stars, will be a vehicle to attract more international players. League executive Stan Kasten previously said the PWHL is eying playing exhibition games in Europe and one day establishing teams there.

“Europe is a big part of our future,” Kasten told The AP in May.

Boston Fleet forward and veteran Swiss national team player Alina Muller said she believes the PWHL’s growth and stability will gradually lure more international players. Europeans who came to North America to play collegiately before returning home now they have a league to further their careers.

“Now being able to watch our games and think, ‘Yeah, I want to end up playing professionally,’ will change the attitude toward the sport completely,” said Muller, who played college hockey at Northeastern. “Hopefully in Europe people see that it’s worth the investment, and it’s not just a side gig or charity.”