Palat was injured in the second period when Wild forward Nino Niederreiter lost his balance while in the crease around the Lightning net and fell awkwardly on top of Palat’s left leg. As Niederreiter fell, he pinned Palat’s left leg to the ice.
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“He was on”, Yeo said. Without their best goal-scorer, Minnesota can’t depend on their offense to carry the team quite like they did in the first twelve games of the season. “We have to take advantage of these home games coming up”. “There’s too many good players in there, they’re doing too many good things”.
“It’s nice to be able to pay these guys back a little”, Dubnyk said.
But defense is only half the equation when it comes to preventing goals from being scored.
Dubnyk stopped all 31 shots for his second shutout of the season as the Wild held off the Tampa Bay Lightning 1-0 in front of 19,066. Parise led the Wild and was tied for eighth in the National Hockey League with seven goals. But Bishop was up to the task with key stops on Wild center Mikko Koivu, left wing Jason Zucker and right wing Christoph Bertschy.
With the recent news of Ondrej Palat being sidelined for 3-5 weeks with a lower body injury, a call up was needed in order to fill the void on the Lightning forward unit.
Affable, approachable and willing to banter with the media no matter how he was playing, Dubnyk grinned Saturday night as a contingent of writers approached him following the game.
Dubnyk was the story of a fast-paced opening period which saw the Lightning outshoot the Wild 13-7.
Since starting out with a 3-0 record, Tampa Bay has gone 4-7-2 and is struggling to find its offensive game.
“You know what, we’re going to miss him”, Dubnyk said. “But give Dubnyk credit, he didn’t give up; he battled back to make the save”.
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Erik Erlendsson of the Tampa Bay Tribune added that there’s concern Palat “is more than day-to-day”. The Wild earned their first-ever franchise win, 6-5, against the Lightning at Xcel Energy Center on October 8, 2000…. Tampa Bay LW Jonathan Drouin returned from a five-game absence due to a lower-body injury….
