Iowa Wild Shut Down By Grand Rapids
The Iowa Wild dropped another game on Tuesday night, when they played their final home game for over two weeks against the Grand Rapids Griffins.
It was a 6-2 loss and another instance of the Wild outshooting an opponent while failing to outscore the opponent. They outshot the Griffins 33-31, but just weren’t able to make it happen after getting behind the Griffins early in the game.
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Iowa gave Johan Gustafsson the start, but he didn’t stay on the ice for very long. Gus allowed two goals on four shots before coach John Torchetti yanked him and put John Curry in net.
We were less than five minutes into the game at that point.
Curry would stop the next six Griffins shots to get the Wild out of the first period at a 2-0 deficit. But the second period wouldn’t go well. The Wild were down 5-0 before Olivier Archambault would get the Wild on the board just after the 11 minutes mark, with assists going to Ryan Walters and Ian Schultz.
Marc Hagel added one late in the third after the Wild had given up another to make it a 6-1 deficit, assists went to Jonathon Blum and Tyler Graovac. Hagel also led the team in shots on the night with seven. Brett Sutter was second on the team with four shots. No one else had more than two shots.
Injuries have continued to decimate the Wild and create an untenable situation in Des Moines. The team was without Josh Harding, Joe Perry, Guillaume Gelinas, Jason Gregoire, Brett Bulmer, Benjamin Dieude-Fauvel, Gustav Olofsson, Alex Gudbranson, and Raphael Bussieres due to injuries.
The team also made first round draft pick and last season’s scoring leader Zack Phillips a healthy scratch. Phillips currently sits ninth in scoring on the team and has a minus-19 rating, which is worst among team forwards and second worst on the team.
Iowa is back at it on Saturday and Sunday when they have a back-to-back against the Lake Eerie Monsters on the road.