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SAINT PAUL, Minn. -- Despite finding themselves on divergent postseason paths in the season's final weeks, the playoff-bound Minnesota Wild and homeward-bound Vancouver Canucks are trending nearly identically as they head into a Saturday afternoon tilt.
Something's got to give in the rubber match between the two teams who split a pair of games in Vancouver earlier in the season.
The Wild (44-23-6), who are one win away from clinching a fifth straight playoff berth, enter the matinee matchup with just two victories in their last 10 games (2-8-0) while the Canucks (29-35-9) are just 3-5-2 over the same stretch.
Vancouver ended a six-game losing streak on Tuesday as Daniel Sedin scored the overtime winner on the road in Chicago. The Canucks appeared poised to capitalize on that momentum on Thursday in St. Louis when Henrik Sedin gave his team a 1-0 first-period lead, but the Blues rallied for a 4-1 win.
The Canucks' inability to stay healthy has been a major factor in their struggles all season, continuing a trend in recent years. Vancouver's 375 man games lost to injury leads the NHL and that total will ultimately dwarf the 321 from last season.
Minnesota, on the other hand, has lost 182 so far and Victor Bartley's 73 account for nearly half of that.
"We'll lose 400 man games this year and that's a high number," Vancouver coach Willie Desjardins told the Vancouver Sun. "Does it feel similar to last year? It does feel similar. Not the way you're thinking about, in man games.
"It feels similar in losing games. That's the tough part. Losing is just a hard thing to go through."
In contrast to the Canucks, Minnesota received good news on the injury front as defenseman Christian Folin likely will return to the lineup to face Vancouver after missing 10 games with an arm injury. Minnesota returned defenseman Gustav Oloffson to its American Hockey League affiliate in Iowa.
"It's going to be great to get back out there," Folin said. "It's been a tough almost three weeks now, but I'm ready to get back out there."
Boudreau said it will be nice to have Folin back.
"He's a big defenseman that can play physical when he's on top of his game and we certainly could use that," Boudreau said.
Much like the Canucks, the Wild snapped a five-game losing skid on Tuesday with a 3-2 win against visiting San Jose. But Minnesota also failed to seize the momentum from Zach Parise's early goal on Thursday in the Wild's 3-1 loss to struggling Philadelphia in St. Paul.
Boudreau is wary of facing another non-playoff team coming to town playing loose with nothing on the line.
"Where's no pressure to play, usually it's a tough game," Boudreau said. "You have to beat their will down, and if you don't do that, they usually have a chance to win."
"We're going to play some other teams like that, and really we can't get outworked by them," Parise said after the loss to the Flyers. "They're going to come, they're going to play loose, they're going to work and if you don't show up to play, it's going to be games like that for us."
Although he'd much rather be in the playoff race, Vancouver center Brandon Sutter, who leads the Canucks with four points (three goals, one assist) against Minnesota this season, embraces the spoiler role.
"For us, we just want to come in and prove we can play with these guys," he said. "I don't think there's a whole lot of difference between the good teams in the league and the teams that are out of the playoffs so every game's tight and, obviously, we want to spoil as many teams as we can."
But Desjardins knows his team can't take anything for granted.
"They're a talented group and when they're on their game, they're as good as anybody," Desjardins said. "We know that and we know they're going to be hungry (Saturday).
"We have to be ready to be moving and skating because if we aren't, they're going to make us look bad."
Minnesota has not won consecutive games since Feb. 27-28 and Boudreau says there are no simple solutions to the Wild's woes.
"There is no magical elixir," Boudreau said. "You've got to find it from your inner self. The competitive juices have got to come from inside"
On Friday, the Wild's coaching staff showed players video of a December game when the team was playing at its best.
"We looked at what we did, and how we were successful at that point in time," Boudreau said. "And, hopefully, it will transfer into (Saturday's) game.
"Coaches can yell, they can cajole, they can pat on the back, they can kick in the butt and (all) that, but in the end, we don't go out there and skate."
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