{"id":639745,"date":"2026-05-13T02:39:21","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T02:39:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/639745\/"},"modified":"2026-05-13T02:39:21","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T02:39:21","slug":"eriksson-ek-brodin-wont-travel-with-wild-for-game-5-of-western-2nd-round","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/639745\/","title":{"rendered":"Eriksson Ek, Brodin won\u2019t travel with Wild for Game 5 of Western 2nd Round"},"content":{"rendered":"

Each is still dealing with a lower-body injury and will not make the trip.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Eriksson Ek, a center, will miss his fifth straight game; Brodin, a defenseman, will miss his sixth in a row.<\/p>\n

Minnesota trails 3-1 in the best-of-7 series and will play with its season on the line after a 5-2 loss in Game 4 at Grand Casino Arena on Monday.<\/p>\n

“I mean, honestly, we miss (Eriksson Ek) and Brodin,” forward Marcus Foligno<\/a>\u00a0said Tuesday before the Wild boarded their flight for Denver. “You can see it. Over the course of the series, there’s things that happen and it becomes a chess match a little bit and you get a guy like ‘Ekker’ in there or ‘Brods’ in there it changes a lot of things, right?\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe’re doing our best to keep lasting here and buying those guys time to come back, but I mean, you’re never going to replace guys like that. They mean so much to our lineup.”<\/p>\n

Eriksson Ek had five points (three goals, two assists) and was plus-7 in six games against the Dallas Stars in the first round. He was injured early in the third period of Game 6 when he lost an edge and went into the boards with his right leg first. He returned to that game but hasn’t played since. Eriksson Ek participated in the morning skate before Game 3. Wild coach John Hynes said he has lightly skated since.<\/p>\n

Brodin, who had one assist and averaged 19:41 of ice time in five games against the Stars, was injured blocking a shot in Game 5. He has not skated with the Wild since.<\/p>\n

“They are leaders on this team, they’re veterans on this team, they’re really, really good hockey players, but at the end of the day injuries happen,” Minnesota defenseman Brock Faber<\/a> said. “They have injuries, we have injuries. You can’t dwell on that. You can’t say, \u2018What if?\u2019 or go to bed thinking, \u2018What if?\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s this is the team we\u2019ve got, and we’re confident in this team and what each individual brings. Now you’ve just got to turn the page as quickly as possible and it’s on to the next.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Each is still dealing with a lower-body injury and will not make the trip.\u00a0 Eriksson Ek, a center,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":639746,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99],"class_list":["post-639745","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/639745","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=639745"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/639745\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/639746"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=639745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=639745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=639745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}