Minnesota Wild lose 5 games of regular season due to NHL Lockout

The Minnesota Wild and rest of the NHL teams across North America will all experience a delay to the start of the NHL season. The NHL owners and players are currently in a lockout as the collective bargaining agreement expired on September 15th. The players have been locked out of all team facilities since then and are unable to have organized team practices. The NHL has cancelled the all games through October 24th, adding up to the los of five Minnesota Wild game – three home games and two away games. The Wild were scheduled to open the season at home against the Colorado Avalanche on October 13th, but the Wild and the rest of the NHL will have to wait for the puck to drop.

“These types of things are never good in any sport”, said Wild Head Coach Mike Yeo to 1500ESPN, “There’s always a negative backlash. Maybe here in this city with the summer we had and the momentum that exists, we don’t want to see that broken up at all. At the same time, I’m very confident in our fanbase. If it does happen, I’m confident we’ll be able to jump into things and things will go well.”

The Minnesota Wild had a terrific summer in free agency with the signing of forward  Zach Parise and defensemen Ryan Suter. The talk of the town going into this fall/winter was the Minnesota Wild and the new and the new Stanley Cup aspirations. Hopefully the NHL and players can come to an agreement to keep the fans excited and the players happy.

A few tweets have surfaced that the games may not be truly lost as they can always be rescheduled, but that will still require a new CBA agreement. The following games are currently off the schedule: Wild vs Avalanche (10/13), Wild vs Columbus (10/16), Wild @ Dallas (10/18), Wild @ St. Louis (10/20), Wild vs Montreal (10/23). The Wild are currently scheduled to open on the road at St. Louis (10/26).