Loss of Kirill Kaprizov still stings as Wild prepares to face Capitals

By now, thousands of amateur medical and officiating experts have watched replays of Kirill Kaprizov's awkward crash into the TD Garden boards, courtesy of a questionable hit from the Bruins' Trent Frederic.

Kaprizov, who scored the first Wild goal in the 3-2 victory Thursday in Boston, left the game and won't play Saturday against Washington at Xcel Energy Center.

The video analysts are left with strong opinions and questions. Dirty hit? Upper-body or lower-body injury? Serious? Why didn't ESPN announcers show more concern?

Wild coach Dean Evason said Friday that Kaprizov, the league's seventh-leading scorer, had an upper-body injury and was seeing doctors.

"If Kirill misses a game, that's not good, right?" Evason said after his shorthanded team ran through practice at Tria Rink. "You've got a guy as gritty and determined as he is, and loves the game. If he can't play then, no, we're not optimistic at all ... it's serious enough that he's not going to play tomorrow so hopefully it's not even more serious than that."

Evason didn't back down on his postgame criticism of Frederic, who was clearly playing an irritant role as the Bruins tried to play handsy defense on Kaprizov. On the play, Kaprizov was falling with the puck behind him after getting tangled with a Bruins player, and Frederic gave Kaprizov a final push, causing him to head into the boards, right side first.

"We thought it was an unnecessary hit on a vulnerable player and I hope the league looks after it," Evason said. "We don't believe that's a hockey play. The puck's sitting there. They can grab the puck. Instead they chose to finish a guy that was in a vulnerable position with his back to us, and we lost a great player in our league because of it."

From Boston's side, coach Bruce Cassidy said postgame, "I didn't think there was a malicious intent other than separating him from the puck, which you better do or he'll hurt you, right? You just have to do it in a legal matter. It looked clean from my point."

At any rate, the Wild plays Metropolitan Division-leading Washington on Saturday night without another key player. Kaprizov joins forwards Joel Eriksson Ek, Nick Bjugstad, Brandon Duhaime and Jordan Greenway, goalie Cam Talbot and defenseman Jared Spurgeon on the sidelines. Defenseman Jonas Brodin, who had two assists Thursday, and winger Marcus Foligno, who fought Frederic in the third period, also didn't practice Friday. Evason said Bjugstad's upper-body injury, suffered at the end of Wednesday's practice, was "long-term."

Defenseman Matt Dumba reached for an original "Space Jam" reference, saying, "Feels like we're the first half Toon Squad … we need the Jordan special juice, special drink … just feels like we're going down, but we're going to play these games and try to get some wins."

(For you non-voting members of the Academy, Toon Squad trailed badly at halftime of the basketball game, but rallied to win because, you know, it had Michael Jordan.)

Thursday's victory featured the NHL debuts of 20-year-old first-round picks Matt Boldy, who scored in his close-to-hometown rink, and Marco Rossi. Connor Dewar, in his fifth game, got his first NHL assist.

The three, who have spent most of the season at AHL Iowa, now emerge as key players for the next few games.

"We are not rushing people into our lineup just because they are first rounders, or because they are supposed to play on our hockey club, projected to play," Evason said of Boldy and Rossi, called up on Tuesday. "They prepare them down there in Iowa [and] when everybody involved makes the decision to have them come, we hopefully make that intelligent decision that they are ready to hop into the National Hockey League. Both those guys were last night.

"Having said that, Dewar probably had the best game of anyone."