Before Sunday’s games, Wild left winger Yakob Trenin led the NHL with 72 hits. Teammate Marcus Foligno was 10th with 53, making the Wild the only team with two Top 10 hitmen.

For now, they’re playing on the same line, bracketing rookie center Danila Yurov on the fourth line in last Friday’s 5-2 victory over the Islanders in Long Island, N.Y., and again for Sunday’s home game against Calgary.

So, is this the NHL’s bad-ass line?

“I don’t know, maybe,” Trenin said after Sunday’s morning skate at TRIA Rink. “That’s what we want to be.”

Last season, Foligno and Trenin finished 10th and 12th in regular-season hits with a combined 494 in 153 games.

Foligno, listed at 6-foot-3 and 226 pounds, has always played heavy. At 34, he has a career 2,667 hits in 14-plus NHL seasons. Trenin, a solid 6-2 and, officially, 201 pounds, has 1,018 in six-plus seasons.

“I think if you look at guys like him and Marcus, that’s part of their identity as a player, to be physical,” coach John Hynes said. “Now, it’s not running around and taking yourself out of position to do it, but when Trenny has an opportunity to bump guys or be physical, it’s a factor.”

Both players have the same style, Hynes said.

“When they hit, they hit through people,” the coach said. “They’re not like a regular guy who can come in contact with people.”

Trenin, 28, had a career-high 241 hits for the Wild last season, his first after signing a free-agent deal with Minnesota. He was well aware Sunday that he was leading the NHL, and proud of it.

“Always been hitting a lot, always been in, like, the top 10,” he said. “This time, I’m just there.”

Any difference between a Trenin and Foligno hit?

“Not much, maybe just a couple pounds different,” Foligno said. We play a game similar to each other, and being on the same line now, hopefully it’s a good thing for our team.”

Grand game

Wing Marcus Johansson was set to play his 1,000th career NHL game on Sunday. Playing his 16th NHL season, Johansson, 35, entered the game with a career-high eight-game points streak (5-5–10) and extended it to nine with a second-period assist on a goal by Matt Boldy.

“I had him in New Jersey years ago (2018-19), and he still looks the same — his fitness level, his ability to skate, his hockey sense,” Hynes said. “He can play multiple roles, you know: three on three, four on four, power play, penalty kill. So, I think his ability makes him a valuable piece to a team.”

Briefly

Nico Sturm, a Stanley Cup-winning veteran signed in part for his career 56.5 faceoff success, is nearing a return from an upper body injury that has kept him off the ice all season. He has started skating with skating coach Andy Ness, and Hynes said his initial prognosis of 6-8 weeks would get him back with the team around the end of this month.

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Who doesn’t love the look of an apparent maniac vociferously bobbing his head during his coach’s postgame locker room speech after a big win?

There’s a lot to like about J.J. McCarthy — he’s passionate, competitive and fierce. He’ll put his body on the line. His teammates rally around him.

Those are all traits any team would want in its franchise quarterback. But the ability to consistently complete the forward pass is helpful, as well.

McCarthy was 9 for 12 out of the gates in last week’s thrilling victory in Detroit, but he completed just five of his final 13 attempts in that contest. It was more of the same Sunday, as McCarthy completed 8 of his first 11 passes while leading Minnesota to a 10-3 lead at U.S. Bank Stadium.

He went 12 for 31 the rest of the way — 39%. For reference, in the Monday night fiasco in 2013, Josh Freeman completed 37% of his passes in the Meadowlands.

McCarthy’s accuracy, particularly as games unfold, has not been NFL-caliber to date. Through four starts, he’s completing 54% of his passes while throwing for 173 yards per game. The signal caller has five touchdown passes versus six interceptions.

Those are Josh Rosen numbers cloaked under Tim Tebow intangibles, all in an offense that traditionally delivers Matthew Stafford-like production with almost anyone under center.

Minnesota has played 62 games under coach Kevin O’Connell. Only 10 times in that span has the Vikings’ starting quarterback completed fewer than 57% of his passes. McCarthy is responsible for three of those outings through just four starts.

McCarthy has yet to finish with a total QBR in the top half of the league’s QBs in any week this season. Anything sub-50 is a bad number in that metric, which is produced by ESPN. McCarthy’s best Total QBR this season was a 54 posted against Detroit. On Sunday, it was a 19.

Pick any quarterback stat you’d like at the moment. There are very few charts and graphs circulating social media these days that have McCarthy positioned anywhere other than toward the bottom.

O’Connell said McCarthy “competed” on Sunday. That will be true every time he takes the field. There’s nothing apathetic about the way the 22-year-old approaches the game. You see the juice flowing through his veins when success occurs, as well as the frustration when things aren’t going well.

The latter look is becoming all too familiar.

Yes, he’s only 22. Yes, Sunday marked his fourth NFL start.

O’Connell is quick to remind everyone of as much. But the list of quarterbacks who’ve struggled to complete a high volume of passes early in their career and then went on to achieve great things is … Josh Allen and ?

Sunday certainly wasn’t all McCarthy’s fault. The Myles Price kick return fumble was costly. That wasn’t a sterling showing from Justin Jefferson, who continues to struggle with McCarthy under center. The pre-snap penalties were a major problem (though the quarterback surely owns a chunk of that blame).

It’s not as though Sunday’s performance alone is enough to sound alarms. But on the whole, there aren’t enough flashes to date to suggest McCarthy is a guy who can efficiently run a high-octane offense.

The easy stuff is not yet automatic.

“Every snap right now there’s major growth and learning and teaching going on for a guy that was really making his fourth start,” O’Connell said.

Fortunately for McCarthy, and Minnesota, this doesn’t look like a playoff team. So the heat to look for better options to start under center is, in the interim, set on “low.” This can be a developmental season in which things are learned and strides are made.

But strides do need to be made. Because seven more games of this lack of efficiency in the passing game would leave the Vikings with no choice but to look for alternative options for 2026. San Francisco cut the cord on Trey Lance when he was 22. Arizona moved on from Rosen after his age 21 season.

No, it doesn’t look *that* bad with McCarthy.

The problem is, it also doesn’t look that much better.

There was frustration on the face of everybody in the locker room on Sunday afternoon at U.S. Bank Stadium as the Vikings tried to explain all the mistakes they made in their 27-19 loss to the Baltimore Ravens.

The recurring theme? The pre-snap penalties.

The Vikings were whistled for a whopping eight false starts against the Ravens, which made it extremely hard for the offense to move the chains. That was enough to make head coach Kevin O’Connell want to pull his hair out as he tried to make sense of it after the game.

“Whatever was going on was not acceptable,” he said. “We’ve got to get it fixed, and we will.”

The culprits included left tackle Christian Darrisaw, center Blake Brandel and right tackle Brian O’Neill on the offensive line, plus quarterback J.J. McCarthy, receiver Justin Jefferson and tight end Ben Yurosek.

“I’m the orchestrator of the orchestra,” McCarthy said. “I take full responsibility for anything that happens.”

As much as McCarthy deserves credit for falling on the sword, it would’ve hit harder had he been able to actually shed light on the situation. Asked to pinpoint what exactly went wrong, McCarthy couldn’t provide an explanation.

“We’re going to have to get together as a group and talk about it,” O’Neill said. “I haven’t been a part of something like that before.”

It seems impossible that a home team can get called for a false start that many times. That issue is almost always reserved for a road team.

“We’ve got to find a way to first and foremost correct whatever the issue was,” O’Connell said. “There seemed to be a flinch here and there way, way, way too much.”

Some theories that got thrown around by the Vikings after the game included McCarthy’s use of the hard count during his cadence, as well as the Ravens making calls in the trenches that mimicked the inflection of the ball being hiked.

“They were trying to get us to jump,” running back Aaron Jones said. “They were playing a little game there.”

As he tried to come to grips with what happened, O’Neill kept shaking his head back and forth.

“We’ve got to operate better as a unit,” O’Neill said. “I’ll take it upon myself to make sure we get it fixed.”

Is it something that can be fixed easily?

“I’d like to think so,” O’Neill said. “We’ve got to go do it.”

The worst part is the Vikings have worked so hard to correct this issue. They were plagued by presnap penalties in the early stages of this season, and now it’s rearing its ugly head once again.

“That’s been a huge point of what we think it’s going to take to win the game every week,” O’Connell said. “We talk to the team about eliminating those self inflicted. We didn’t do that in any way, shape, or form. We’ve got to fix it.”

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After upsetting the Detroit Lions on the road last week, the Vikings put themselves back into the playoff picture. Though it was going to be an uphill climb to get themselves above the cut line, the Vikings had seemingly figured out a recipe for success.

A balanced offense that only asked young quarterback J.J. McCarthy to make a handful of plays. A dynamic defense that didn’t allow their opponent to get into a rhythm.  A spirited special teams unit that provided a spark here and there.

That was nowhere to be found on Sunday afternoon at U.S. Bank Stadium as the Vikings suffered a 27-19 loss to the Baltimore Ravens that didn’t even feel that close.

After an impressive opening drive, McCarthy couldn’t get into a rhythm, completing 20 of 42 passes in total for 248 yards, a touchdown, and a pair of interceptions. The ineffectiveness of the offense made it virtually impossible for the defense to cook up anything on the other end. It also didn’t help matters that the special teams struggled as rookie receiver Myles Price fumbled a kick return at an inopportune time.

Frankly, the Vikings entered the game against the Ravens hoping they were a playoff team, and they got to see what a playoff team actually looks like.

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