Here’s the Wild game story with quotes. It just added to the startribune.com/wild page. 

We were again psyched out by Jacques Lemaire. Unfortunately I figured it out over dinner two hours ago and not this morning when I said to myself, “How do you scratch Boogaard in front of an amped crowd? I wonder if Weller’s the guy?”

Yup, Craig Weller did not make his Wild debut tonight.

However, everybody else that made their debuts played huge roles in the offense.

Marc-Andre Bergeron became the first Wild defenseman to score in his debut since Kurtis Foster scored twice vs. Nashville on Nov. 19, 2005. Antti Miettinen scored a great goal by driving the net and redirecting Andrew Brunette’s pinpoint pass.

Colton Gillies, 19, had his first NHL point. He’s a mere 807 points behind Owen Nolan, who had an assist.

“Did you guys hear me from the ice? Oh man, I was definitely screaming,” Gillies said of his assist to Eric Belanger, the first of two Belanger goals.

After the game, Nolan also told a relieved Gillies to cherish every game because it goes by quick.

Wild obviously got off to an extremely slow start tonight, predictable after not playing for six days. It dominated the second during a three-goal period. And I thought they were terrible in the third. I mean, it took them 10 minutes to get a shot, but predictably, Jacques Lemaire liked the third period better than any other.

You’ve got to love Jacques.

“I didn’t like the game that much,” Lemaire said. “I know we’ll play better than we did tonight. It’s always great to win, but you have to know that there’s certain things you’ll have to do in the future if you want to keep winning. One, play the style game we want, which is moving the puck quick and try to play in their zone more than our zone, not turning the puck over, which we did the whole first period.”

Bergeron showed off his big shot tonight, but man, defensively, he might be the best thing that ever happened to Martin Skoula in Minnesota. Sometimes Bergeron is downright scary defensively, and Lemaire joked he’s going to be exciting “both sides.”

Amazingly, Lemaire didn’t change the lines at all tonight. How about that, eh?

Belanger was tremendous. He brushed off a pair of high-sticks to score the first and fourth goals (the eventual winner after Marc Savard scored twice in the third). Remember, Belanger got off to a fast start last year before drying up in the second half. But Belanger had a great training camp and looks intent on proving the naysayers wrong.

Brian Stensaas plans a Belanger feature for Monday’s paper (subject to change depending on Sunday’s practice).

Niklas Backstrom made 34 saves to improve to 53-15-10 in his last 78 decisions. He admitted he was fighting the puck bigtime early, even though he made six saves to kill a double minor early in the first. He said standing around during the pregame division title banner-raising really affected him.

Speaking of the banner raising, of the guys playing, the loudest cheers went to Brent Burns and Mikko Koivu. But Kurtis Foster got a rousing applause when the injured defenseman, who broke his leg last year, was introduced while standing on the bench.

Craig Weller didn’t get a chance to debut. He was scratched, and last week I was chatting with Lemaire in Columbus, and he said the coaches were really trying to work with Weller because he wasn’t doing things the way they wanted on the ice.

Other notes: It was Belanger’s sixth multi-goal game.

Bouchard’s two assists made for his 46th multi-point game. The Wild is 40-5-1 when he has at least two points.

The Wild is 7-0-1 all-time in home openers, including seven wins in a row.

That’s it from here. Stencils has the next two days, so he’ll be a blogging fool. I’ll talk to you Monday or Tuesday from Atlanta.

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 11th, 2008 at 7:02 pm and is filed under Game coverage. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.