The Minnesota Wild were set to host the Tampa Bay Lightning at 7:00 p.m. on Military Appreciation Night, with Kirill Kaprizov, Joel Eriksson Ek and Matt Boldy listed together on the top projected line. For a matchup framed as a battle of two of the NHL's best, the first look at Minnesota's forward groups offered the clearest preview of how the home side planned to start the night.
The game was available on Wild+ and KFAN FM 100.3, giving fans two ways to follow the lineup before puck drop. The projected combinations also placed Maxim Shabanov with Danila Yurov and Yakov Trenin on the second line, Blake Coleman with Michael McCarron and Bobby Brink on the third, and Nico Sturm with Ryan Hartman and Tyler Pitlick on the fourth.
That list matters because it is a projection, not a final card. The combinations give a snapshot of how the Wild were expected to line up, but they also leave room for a change before the game began, which is why the most useful detail for readers is not just who was named together but that the arrangement had not yet been locked in.
What comes next is simple: the game starts at 7:00 p.m., and that first shift will show whether the projected top line stays intact when the Lightning and the Wild actually drop the puck.
