Reusse: Injuries have rocked the Wild, but resiliency has defined them

There is a popular sports question in these parts every August, when glimpses of new talent are being seen in exhibition games and the Purple Faithful are in a mood to share their optimism with others.

The conversation starter is this: “How do you think the Vikings are going to do this season?”

You can either nod and say, “This is the season when they will win that Super Bowl,” or offer a sincere answer, which in my case has become:

“Tell me how many starters are going to be injured and miss most of the schedule. Two? Assuming it’s not the quarterback, they have a shot at a home playoff game. Five? They won’t be among the 43.75 percent of teams in the playoffs.”

The injury factor always has been the great unknown in football, including the NFL. I’m thinking the realization that it was the be-all came in 2016, which was Mike Zimmer’s third season as the Vikings head coach.

The Purple had gone from 7-9 in 2014 to 11-5 in 2015 and a playoff appearance as underdogs to Seattle at TCF Bank Stadium. You might remember it was cold that day and Blair Walsh missed a 27-yard field goal.

We were all in on Zimmer’s feisty demeanor and filled with optimism entering the 2016 season. Quarterback Teddy Bridgewater suffered a serious leg injury in a preseason practice. Adrian Peterson had a bad knee. The offensive line was obliterated, to the point of desperation that poor, worn-out Jake Long was here for a bit to play offensive tackle.

Uff da. Going 8-8 was almost miraculous.

So, that’s become my theory on the NFL:

How are we going to do? First, tell me how many starters are going to get hurt.

And in modern competition, that has become a determining factor in all high-level team sports.

The athletes are better. That means more is required of an athlete’s muscles and skeleton to compete. And when something is going wrong, there are MRIs and other machines to find the problem.

That question about our Vikings: “How many starters are going to get hurt?”

There seems to be an easier answer with our Twins: “Pretty much all of them.”

I don’t believe that can be traced to a staff of well-studied athletic trainers not being as sharp as was “Doc” Lentz with the original Twins in the 1960s. I do believe if a player such as Royce Lewis remained close to the lithe figure drafted No. 1 overall in 2017, rather than a player thick with muscles, he probably wouldn’t be popping hamstrings running to first base.

Then again, the home run had become the main run-scoring philosophy of the Twins, so Lewis just wanted the power to join in the fun.

Which gets us to Thursday night’s hockey game in St. Paul, where the Wild were hosting the Washington Capitals, a team leading the NHL with 103 total points. This was home game No. 10 in March for the Wild. The 11th of those is Saturday at 5 p.m. vs. New Jersey.

There was some unhappiness that the Wild were not taking proper advantage of the home ice. There was a loss to the terrible Pittsburgh Penguins earlier this month, a 5-1 hammering from the Blues, and another 5-1 beating from the Vegas Knights earlier this week.

Even before the 4-2 win over the Caps and Alex Ovechkin, there was a look at the lineups and this thought: “We have been too unkind to our Skating W’s, based on the injury factor.”

Washington had 12 players that had played all previous 71 games. The Wild had three players who had played all 72 for them: Matt Boldy, Marco Rossi and Frederick Gaudreau.

Defensive stopper Jonas Brodin was back after missing most of a month, his third long stretch of missed games. He was playing his 41st game in total, while doing much to shut down Ovechkin.

More dramatically, the Wild’s two best players — Kirill Kaprizov and Joel Eriksson Ek — skated on Thursday morning but remained missing.

Kaprizov has played three games since the Christmas break, and has been out since Jan. 29. He’s played 37 games total, half the season. Eriksson Ek, believed by many to have been injured in the idiotic, mid-season Four Nations Cup, has been out since Feb. 25 and has played 42 games.

So go ahead — flashback to Oct. 10 and ask me:

“Mr. Hockey, where will our beloved Wild finish if Kaprizov and Eriksson Ek miss half the season, and Brodin misses 30 games?”

Answer: “They will be ahead of Chicago and San Jose in the West, and that’s it.”

Wrong. The Wild have been rocked, but are resilient.

Get Kaprizov and Eriksson Ek back, and some outfit is going to get upset in the first round of the playoffs. Don’t agree, just ask Ovechkin after Thursday night.