{"id":647573,"date":"2026-05-03T20:13:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-03T20:13:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/647573\/"},"modified":"2026-05-03T20:13:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-03T20:13:08","slug":"wild-sanheim-bruins-captain-pro-hockey-rumors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/647573\/","title":{"rendered":"Wild, Sanheim, Bruins Captain \u2013 Pro Hockey Rumors"},"content":{"rendered":"

Minnesota Wild defenseman Jonas Brodin<\/a> will not be able to play in game one against the Colorado Avalanche tonight, reports Michael Russo of The Athletic<\/a>. Additionally, center Joel Eriksson Ek<\/a> is questionable with a lower-body injury. Eriksson Ek is questionable after he was shaken up in game six against the Dallas Stars, due to the fact that he lost his balance and hit the boards with some force. Brodin missed game six with a lower-body injury.<\/p>\n

The fact that Minnesota will be without Brodin is already a significant loss for them, but the potential loss of Eriksson Ek could be even more significant. Colorado boasts center depth that is the envy of the league. Few teams have the kind of talent down the middle to be able to play a center like Nazem Kadri<\/a>, who nearly led the Calgary Flames in scoring despite being traded mid-season, as a No. 3 pivot. The Wild are likely to count on Eriksson Ek\u2019s highly-regarded defensive ability heavily in their efforts to shut down Nathan MacKinnon<\/a>, Martin Necas<\/a>, and others, so his health will be a key storyline to track as this series gets going.<\/p>\n

Other notes from around the NHL:<\/p>\n

The Philadelphia Flyers No. 1 defenseman Travis Sanheim<\/a> was knocked out of game one against the Carolina Hurricanes with an apparent lower-body injury. Per NBC Sports Philadelphia\u2019s Jordan Hall<\/a>, Sanheim \u201cwas banged up after taking a hit into the side boards\u201d during the game. The Athletic\u2019s Kevin Kurz reported<\/a> that the media requested to speak with Sanheim post-game but he was not made available, something that is not out of the ordinary when a player\u2019s availability is newly in question. Sanheim has averaged nearly 26 minutes per night in the playoffs so far, meaning his health is of massive importance to the Flyers\u2019 hopes of pulling off a second consecutive upset series win.
\nBoston Bruins head coach Marco Sturm told the media today that he is comfortable with the team\u2019s current leadership structure, and may not necessarily enter 2026-27 with a captain. The Bruins have not had a captain since they traded Brad Marchand<\/a> to the Florida Panthers. The team had four alternate captains in 2025-26: Elias Lindholm<\/a>, Hampus Lindholm<\/a>, Charlie McAvoy<\/a>, and David Pastrnak<\/a>. Among that quartet, McAvoy and Pastrnak are the most likely candidates, at face value, to be captain given the length of their respective tenures in Boston.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Minnesota Wild defenseman Jonas Brodin will not be able to play in game one against the Colorado Avalanche…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":647574,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,5789,222618,222619,7524,575,3065,31034,85,286242],"class_list":["post-647573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-boston-bruins","tag-joel-eriksson-ek","tag-jonas-brodin","tag-minnesota-wild","tag-nhl","tag-philadelphia-flyers","tag-snapshots","tag-sports","tag-travis-sanheim"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/647573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=647573"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/647573\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/647574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=647573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=647573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=647573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}