Wild's Calen Addison responds to challenge to be better defensively

Wild coach Dean Evason called the decision to scratch Calen Addison recently a "wake-up call" for the rookie to defend better.

Mission accomplished.

"His challenge is to defend and be a real good defender and be an all-around defenseman so that he can not only have a long career, but he can help his hockey team win each and every night," Evason said. "It's the best we've seen him do that. It's his challenge now to continually do that each and every night."

After getting sidelined Friday at Edmonton, Addison was back in action Saturday when the Wild's road trip concluded in Vancouver, and he stayed in the lineup Monday to face the Oilers.

In those two games, the Wild gave up zero goals while Addison was on the ice compared with four during the two contests before that.

Package that effectiveness with Addison's skills on the power play, and the 22-year-old offers the two-way game he wants to provide.

"It's just focusing more defensively, just kind of knowing where I'm at in the D-zone, knowing where my guy is all the time, making the right switches, just being more alert," said Addison, who remained alongside Jon Merrill on Wednesday vs. Detroit and continues to lead NHL rookie defensemen in scoring with 15 points. "I think when my defensive game is good, I think my offensive game is better, too. So I think it's just being more consistent and having that aspect of my game every night."

"He's been fitting in awesome," Boldy said of Walker, the former Gopher who was called up from the minors last week to make his NHL debut. "I think [Monday] he had a lot more confidence in his own game, just being a little bit more poised with the puck and making more plays, and I think it's only going to get better.

"He's super smart. He knows how to get into certain spots to make easy plays, too. I think he's just going to get better."

The Wild used just their second coach's challenge of the season Monday, an unsuccessful goaltender interference check on Edmonton's first goal on the power play.

Evason said there was a leaguewide memo from the NHL that outlined the requirements for goalie interference, and Wild felt the situation with the Oilers' Zach Hyman applied.

Hyman was in the crease but then left before backhanding the puck past Wild netminder Marc-Andre Fleury.

But the league decided there wasn't any interference, and the Wild were dinged with a delay of game penalty.

"How far back do you go before the goal?" Evason said. "We thought it was soon enough because it hit Flower's glove and then they slammed it in, same guy. So, we thought that was still a continuation of the bump.

"It seemed to fit all the criteria but hindsight, we were talking, you don't have to be 100 percent. You have to be 1,000 percent that it's right or don't challenge it."

That was one of three challenges to work against the Wild in three games.