After a 7-3 loss to the Los Angeles Kings on Thursday, Wild goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury was asked about what the team’s 2-2-0 record through four games might indicate.

“Better than last season,” he noted. “Gotta go with that.”

It’s true, the Wild started the 2022-23 campaign by losing their first three games, and four of five overall. But no one in the Wild’s dressing room, training room or offices at Xcel Energy Center late Thursday was happy with being .500.

“We’ve just been even, which is our record, 2-2,” head coach Dean Evason after a late-morning practice Friday at TRIA Rink. “We need to take another step forward.”

That can start on Saturday at the X, where the Wild play host to Columbus in a 7 p.m. puck drop. To that end, the coaching staff has altered two lines, sending Pat Maroon to the second line with center Joel Eriksson Ek and wing Marcus Johansson, and Sammy Walker into Maroon’s former spot on the fourth line with Connor Dewar and Brandon Duhaime.

“We need to generate a little bit more,” Evason said before catching himself. “Well, we generate; we need to score more.”

The truth is the Wild need a little more from everyone, from the goaltenders to the top line.

Still, the blue line’s struggles without captain Jared Spurgeon, out since suffering an upper-body injury in a preseason game, have been conspicuous. Even in a season-opening shutout of defending Eastern Conference champion Florida, Filip Gustavsson had to stop 41 shots.

After praising Dakota Mermis’ play in Thursday’s game, Evason added, “The rest of the guys should be playing like NHL players.”

Rookie Brock Faber, pulse-3, is the only Wild defenseman with a plus-rating, and Jake Middleton — Spurgeon’s season-opening partner — is a minus-6. It’s also impossible not to note that the Wild have started the season with three blue liners — Calen Addison, Alex Goligoski and Jon Merrill — who, combined, were healthy scratches for all but two of the team’s six playoff games last April.

Still, as Evason noted Friday, it’s never just on the defense. The sloppy forward play led to at least two goals last weekend in Toronto, and despite leading the Wild in scoring with six points apiece, Kirill Kaprizov and Mats Zuccarello are each minus-5.

“I talk about scoring goals, but we have to tighten up defensively, too,” Evason said. “We’ve given up too many goals, for sure. So, we’ve gotta do some things in all areas.”

Spurgeon has started skating but doesn’t appear close to returning. His absence doesn’t just break up one pair; it trickles down to the rest of the blue line — and the club at large.

“Jared Spurgeon is one of the best defensemen in the world,” Evason said. “Not only that, he’s the captain of our hockey club. It would be silly to say we don’t miss Jared Spurgeon.”

Matt Boldy, whose spot on the second line Walker filled on Thursday, started skating Friday for the first time since suffering an upper-body injury at Toronto. He also doesn’t appear to be close.

“They’re all on the ice just to skate, they’re not shooting and that kind of stuff with that upper body,” Evason said. “It’s just an opportunity to keep their legs going so that when they’re physically ready to play, they’ve got their legs under them.”

“It’s good, obviously, that they’re on the ice. They’re progressing,” the coach added, but their statuses remain week to week. Goligoski, who suffered a lower-body injury during a practice Monday in Montreal, is on the long-term injured list and will miss at least nine more games.

Phantom goal

Evason said the team has flushed the Kings’ weird third goal, which was reviewed to see if Pierre-Luc Dubois kicked it through Fleury’s legs on Thursday night.

Local replay never actually caught a stick hitting the puck, although it did appear to change its trajectory, indicating it was struck by something, and the NHL office in Toronto ruled the goal — ruled good by on-ice officials — could not be overturned.

The goal was the first of two in the final minute of the first period and changed the tone of the game, but Evason noted the Wild caught a break when their second goal was allowed after being reviewed for possible offsides.

“It happened. It went in the net,” Evason said. “We had an offside that went our way, right? So, the breaks — if you want to go that way — are even, so you can’t whine about it.”

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As biographer Laurence Leamer settled in front of the television to research the films of Alfred Hitchcock, he realized he had a problem.

“I started watching this as an author writing the book and trying to get material,” Leamer says on a recent call. “And after five minutes, his stuff is so fascinating I forget that and just watch it because I’m enjoying it so much.

“That’s how good he is,” he says. “That’s how he involves you. He knows just what he’s doing.”

Leamer persevered and “Hitchcock’s Blondes: The Unforgettable Women Behind the Legendary Director’s Dark Obsession” arrived on Tuesday, Oct. 10.

In it, Leamer explores the work of Hitchcock and eight actresses with whom he worked, from June Howard-Tripp in 1925’s “The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog” to Tippi Hedren in “The Birds” and “Marnie” in 1963 and ’64.

In between, Leamer explores Hitchcock’s work with Madeleine Carroll (“The 39 Steps,” “Secret Agent”), Ingrid Bergman (“Spellbound,” “Notorious,” “Under Capricorn”), Grace Kelly (“Dial M for Murder,” “Rear Window,” “To Catch a Thief”), Kim Novak (“Vertigo”), Eva Marie Saint (“North by Northwest”), and Janet Leigh (“Psycho“).

Hitchcock’s life and career has been examined in numerous books from before and after his death at 80 in 1980. His infatuation with his leading ladies, particularly the blondes and his odd, sometimes cruel manner with them are well known.

But Leamer is the first biographer to shift the focus from Hitchcock in the foreground to zoom in on the women with whom the director achieved some of his greatest works.

“Hitchcock’s Blondes” is the second in a planned trilogy about male creative geniuses and their female friends, colleagues and confidants. Leamer, 81, is currently working on a book about artist Andy Warhol and his many muses.

The first book in his series, “Capote’s Women: A True Story of Love, Betrayal, and a Swan Song for an Era” arrived in 2021. Its story of writer Truman Capote and the New York City circle of women in which he moved arrives as the second chapter of producer Ryan Murphy’s FX anthology series “Feud” in 2024.

Q: Do you remember when you first became aware of Alfred Hitchcock?

A: He’s so much a part of our culture, I don’t even know. You know, if you go on Amazon Prime and plug in Hitchcock, there are over 40 of his films you can watch today. That’s the magnitude of that guy’s accomplishments.

Q: How did you arrive at the framework of the book, focusing on these eight women?

A: Well, chronology is God’s gift to a writer. You’d better have a damn good reason to do away with it. So the chronology is his life and the blondes are pretty obviously the candidates for telling it.

When I write a book, I always write the ending in my head and then I try to write the book that would justify that ending. And that’s what I did here. I wanted the ending to be that AFI tribute (in March 1979). I wanted the audience at that point, the readers, to appreciate his greatness, and also the dark part of it as well. And to appreciate the actresses as well.

Q: Three of the actresses are still living. Tippi Hedren doesn’t do interviews but you were able to talk with Eva Marie Saint from ‘North by Northwest’ and Kim Novak from ‘Vertigo.’ What was that like?

A: Eva Marie Saint was fabulous. You know, she’s 99 years old now, living by herself in her apartment. She wants to have her own life. I think that’s incredible.

Q: From her chapter in the book, she seems to be one of the most grounded of the Hitchcock actresses.

A: She was grounded, but she is calculating. And I don’t say that as a criticism, just the opposite. She knew the life she wanted early on. She had some success in television. Got a little apartment. She was lonely, she wanted to marry. She didn’t want to marry an actor. She married this producer. And they had the most wonderful marriage.

Then in her career, she loved her children. She liked to act, but when they were growing up, she’d do just one movie a year. She put her Academy Award statuette for ‘On The Waterfront’ in the closet and just forgot it. She really has immense character as far as I’m concerned.

Q: A lot of the stories of Hitchcock and the actresses are well known. I’m curious what your conversation with her provided that you didn’t already have?

A: She had some tidbits, but she’s told these stories many times. I found a few new things. It was just as much to get a real feeling of her emotionally. I think I wrote a much better chapter because I knew her in that way.

Q: Kim Novak, from your chapter on her, seems like perhaps the actress Hitchcock treated the worst. What was she like?

A: It’s inexplicable to me (how she was treated). He brings her up to luncheon and shows her his paintings, which he knows she won’t appreciate the way he appreciates them, and the vintage wine, which she doesn’t understand. Just to put her down. And the first day in the studio there’s this dead chicken attached to her mirror and Hitch and the other men standing around laughing at her.

She said she didn’t know what that was about. I don’t know what it’s about. It just didn’t make any sense to me. But it’s not a great thing to do to this vulnerable, insecure actress on the first day.

And then when she finished it, I think she deserved an Academy Award nomination because I think she’s magnificent. It’s a very difficult role. But Hitch put her down. Even when that putting down probably diminished the number of people wanting to see the movie.

Q: Was she candid and open about her treatment by him?

A: She really appreciated Hitchcock. She has nothing negative to say about it. It’s the best thing she did in her whole life, and she puts it in perspective.

Q: In recent years, there’s been a lot of discussion about how to appreciate art made by men with problematic histories. Might this book change Hitchcock’s reputation?

A: If the things about Woody Allen are true – and I don’t know if they are, but if they are, well, I wouldn’t want to watch his films, right? This stuff about Hitchcock isn’t at that magnitude, in my opinion. In the #MeToo times, people are just too easily dismissed, and I don’t think it’s fair to him.

There was a biographer of him, Donald Spoto, who just focused on the darkness, and that had a big impact on Hitchcock’s reputation. I don’t think that’s fair.

Q: Of the Hitchcock films you watched featuring these women, do you have a favorite you go back to?

A: It depends on what you want. I mean, ‘To Catch a Thief’ is just pure fun. You can’t beat that. ‘Marnie,’ the dark brilliance of that is irresistible. And ‘Psycho,’ I mean, there’s nothing like ‘Psycho,’ right?

Officials removed 22 dogs from an animal-rescue organization in Andover on Friday morning after executing a search warrant in connection with eight dead dogs found in Cottage Grove.

The bodies of the dogs were found along the side of a road Sunday in a rural part of Cottage Grove. They were believed to have been brought into the city for disposal after having died from an illness elsewhere, police said this week. The dogs, all of a smaller variety, were found in the tree line along Grey Cloud Island Drive near Grey Cloud Island Trail in Cottage Grove. The dogs included a Schnauzer and other similar-size white dogs, which could be a terrier breed.

After receiving a tip from the public, Cottage Grove police on Tuesday executed a search warrant on a house in Cottage Grove. A 38-year-old man at the house admitted to dumping the dogs, police said.

Around 10 a.m. Friday, the Anoka County Sheriff’s Office and the Animal Humane Society carried out a search warrant for an animal rescue located near the 15800 block of Seventh Avenue Northwest in Andover.

“The animal rescue, which is not related to the building’s former occupant, an animal training facility, is believed to be where the dogs died,” according to a press release from the Anoka County Sheriff’s Office.

The cause of death for the dogs remains under investigation, the release states.

Twenty-two dogs were removed from the facility and are being cared for by the Animal Humane Society.

“At this time, no arrests have been made and no charges have been filed,” the press release states.

This incident remains under investigation by the Anoka County Sheriff’s Office, Cottage Grove Police Department, and Animal Humane Society.

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