You’re aware the Tampa Bay Lightning are hurting going into tonight’s game at Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul, Minnesota. Injuries are piling up, the lineup is thinning, and the team is coming home after the contest tonight…
And there’s the potential they’ll do it with a flu strain following them too. Michael Russo of the Star Tribune reports that the Wild (and the St. Louis Blues for that matter) have seen an odd strain of the flu show up in their locker rooms. Both teams likely contracted the strain somewhere in southern California while playing the Kings and Ducks this past week. Only two players on the Wild roster have been felled by the bug, which has a very weird symptom to go along with the standard stuff:
[Keith] Ballard and [Christian] Folin both had flu-like symptoms like shivering, sweating, headache and incredible fatigue, but it started with swollen jaws. Honestly, they both look like they have been punched in the face and teammates say it was unbelievably worse a few days ago. Kyle Brodziak said their jaws jutted out several inches.
The Wild staff is doing what they can to make sure things don’t spread among their roster any father than Ballard and Folin. I don’t expect it to spread to the Bolts, it’s just the potential is there that it happens by chance.
