Zach Parise injury makes winning even more impossible for Wild

The Minnesota Wild will be without veteran forward Zach Parise, who will miss six-to-eight weeks with a broken sternum. If their road to the Cup wasn’t difficult enough before, it just got far worse.

The Minnesota Wild received devastating news on Tuesday that star forward Zach Parise (three goals) would miss six-to-eight weeks after fracturing his sternum late in Game 3 against the Winnipeg Jets. The Wild were already dealing with Ryan Suter’s season-ending injury, and now they’ll likely be without Parise for the remainder of the playoffs.

For the Wild, the remainder of the playoffs for the Wild is now likely two more games. The Jets hold a 2-1 series lead.

Parise was injured on a hit from Mark Schiefele and Ben Chiarot on one of his last shifts of the game, which led to the injury.

The Wild are coming off of a Game 3 win at home against the Jets, due largely to great play from Parise. His veteran leadership and scoring ability is going to be difficult to match on a team that is fairly thin to begin with (in comparison to the Jets). The Jets are too deep and too good to drop this series to a team that is down two franchise players.

Parise had eight goals in his last eight games, including one in each playoff game of this series. The Wild were hanging with the Jets on the scoreboard in this series, but they have been out-shot by a staggering 115-66 margin in the series so far. Devan Dubnyk has been playing at an elite level, but there is only so much a goaltender can do. Losing one of your top scorers is terrible news when shots, let alone goals, are hard to come by.

You can’t help but feel for the Wild this postseason. They had a great regular season, amassing 101 points. They suffered the loss of Suter late in the season, which was a huge blow, but Sunday’s game gave Minnesotans hope. Unfortunately, that hope is now all but gone.

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