Bruce Boudreau reshuffled his lines during Thursday's 6-4 comeback victory over Nashville and stuck with the newly assembled units for Friday's practice. The lines went:
Mikael Granlund-Mikko Koivu-Jason Zucker
Marcus Foligno-Erik Staal-Nino Niederreiter
Daniel Winnik-Joel Eriksson Ek-Luke Kunin
Chris Stewart-Matt Cullen-Tyler Ennis
"Yeah," Boudreau said, "and they may change in the first period of [Saturday's game at Washington]. … I tried Marcus [Foligno] on that [Staal] line about a week ago, and he didn't have very good games. But I wanted to give him a crack at it again, and I thought he came in and did a lot of good things."
The practice also offered hints that Alex Stalock could be gearing up to start in goal Saturday, with Devan Dubnyk getting a chance to rest after making eight consecutive starts.
"Eventually, we're going to sit him again, yeah," Boudreau said. "I don't know when it's going to be, but we've got five games in the next eight nights, so I'm sure it'll be split up pretty well."
On Stalock, Boudreau added, "We know what he can do. I mean, he practices hard every day, so it's not a worry about anything of rust or anything when he goes in the net."
The Wild flew to the nation's capital right after practice. On Saturday night, Boudreau's team will face a Washington squad coming off losses of 6-3 (to Nashville) and 6-2 (to Colorado).
Asked if that losing streak makes him happy or cringe, Boudreau said, "Oh, it's a cringe time because I mean, that team is not used to losing. And I'm sure they're hearing it today. For some reason, I follow that team a little bit, and that doesn't happen very often where they get beat badly and don't come back with their best game the next night."
