Ottawa Senators center Mika Zibanejad (93) and Winnipeg Jets center Mark Schiefele (55) battle for position in the first period of their NHL game on Thursday. Picture: Marc DesRosiers-USA TODAY Sports

By Michael Russo/Star Tribune (Minneapolis)


The Wild lost a big divisional game to the Nashville Predators on Thursday night, 3-2, but the team may have a bigger problem on its hand.
Zach Parise, who led the Wild with 33 goals last season and leads the Wild with seven this season, sustained an apparent right knee injury 30 seconds into his first shift of the game.He returned to play five more shifts, but he seemed to be having trouble pushing off and ultimately left the game for good with 2 minutes, 23 seconds left in the first period. By game’s end, the Wild was only calling it a lower-body injury.
Parise was hit 75 seconds into the game by Predators forward James Neal, who always plays on the line. High in the offensive zone, Parise turned toward the wall to backhand a loose puck into the slot when Neal came from behind and checked him above the numbers.
In the process, their knees collided and Parise fell awkwardly. He had trouble getting to his feet, skated gingerly to the bench and limped down the runway.
Parise didn’t miss a shift though. He returned to the bench so quickly, Parise was on the ice when orthopedic surgeon Joel Boyd showed up in the tunnel to talk to athletic trainer John Worley.
But late in the period after a 4-on-4 shift in which he clearly wasn’t himself, Parise made a beeline for the bench, walked through the door and limped directly down the runway.
The Wild, which has less $648,000 in salary-cap space, has no healthy forwards on the roster with Tyler Graovac and Justin Fontaine hurt. Also, things are very thin down in the minors.
Zac Dalpe and Michael Keranen are hurt with Iowa, a team that severely lacks skill and has only scored 17 goals in 12 games. The Wild’s most skilled forwards left are Christoph Bertschy, Zack Mitchell and Brett Bulmer. Former NHL veteran Ruslan Fedotenko is also there, but he has no goals in nine games.
In the meantime, the Parise loss caused coach Mike Yeo to shuffle up his lines like he running a BINGO hall.
Thomas Vanek took Parise’s spot on the Mikael Granlund-Jason Pominville line and Charlie Coyle skated with Erik Haula and Ryan Carter, although Chris Porter and Jordan Schroeder saw occasional shifts.The one constant was the Jason Zucker-Mikko Koivu-Nino Niederreiter line, which spent the night buzzing the offensive zone like usual.
Dubnyk and Rinne carried a scoreless game until late in the second period, but late in the third period in was 2-2 after goals by Nashville’s Mike Fisher and Roman Josi and Minnesota’s Marco Scandella and Matt Dumba. Both the Wild’s goals were on power plays, but the Wild’s power play couldn’t come through with the score tied 2-2 or in the final 1:39 of the game.
Dumba’s power-play goal 6:51 into the period through traffic tied the score at 2-2, but with 5:31 left, Devan Dubnyk, who had played a solid game and had just robbed Josi twice and Neal once, got handcuffed by a Cody Hodgson shot from the right circle. The puck fell out of Dubnyk’s just unveiled new one-piece pads, and Hodgson followed up by scoring the winning goal.
Dubnyk contended there should have been a whistle because he felt he had the puck frozen, but the referee never blew it down. The Preds jumped out to a 1-0 lead when the Wild got caught in a line change. Predators defenseman Shea Weber spotted it and took advantage, hitting Fisher with a home-run pass for a breakaway goal not long after Rinne denied Zucker on a breakaway.
However, a little more than a minute later, Granlund stole a puck high in the offensive zone, put it down low and Vanek drew a penalty. Twelve seconds later, Scandella took Ryan Suter’s pass and rifled his second power-play goal of the season to tie the score at 1 with 2:24 left in the second.
That didn’t last long. Just 12 seconds into the third, defenseman Roman Josi scored the go-ahead goal on a deflected after Koivu’s second bad own-zone giveaway in two games.
But the Wild would tie the score at 2-2 when Dumba, put on the power play because the Parise injury shuffled the deck, whistled a bullet through traffic.