Pretty impressive victory by the Wild considering it was without wingers Marian Gaborik, Pierre-Marc Bouchard and Owen Nolan and defenseman Marek Zidlicky.

The Wild’s gameplan was to move the puck quick because the Panthers are an aggressive, physical team. They felt it would tire them out by the third period, and yes, the Panthers looked exhausted, pretty shocking for a young team that hadn’t played in three or four days.

Again the Andrew Brunette, Mikko Koivu, Antti Miettinen line, which needs a better nickname than the one I used tonight, were tremendous. Ten points. 8 goals, 24 points for the season! Very unWildlike. Those eight goals are on 23 shots, by the way.

Koivu had a career-high five points, a team-record-tying four helpers. Miettinen had his second straight two-goal, three-point game. He’s the first Wild player to score goals in his first three games. Brunette had another goal and an assist.

Benoit Pouliot, who was called out after Tuesday’s game and Wednesday’s practice by Jacques Lemaire, had a goal and an assist. Kim Johnsson had a goal and an assist. Newcomer Tomas Mojzis was very good and had an assist. Derek Boogaard had his first point in 596 games, although Wade Belak did a number on his right eye and knocked out one of his teeth during a fight.

Funny story. Between the first and second periods, my friends Mark and Meredith brought their four-year-old son, Preston, up to the side of the press box to say hi.

I asked what Preston thought of the fight and the melee that happened a few minutes before — Gregory Campbell tackled Erik Reitz for kneeing Rostislav Olesz and Keith Ballard and Nick Boynton tangled with an angry Boogaard.

Preston said, “The players were put in timeout for pushing each other.”

Who says fighting in hockey is a bad influence for children?

I did see Gaborik after the game, but I didn’t have a chance to talk to him due to tight deadline and he never called me back today.  He was talking to a Slovak reporter though, so check out those publications in the next few days and send me the translation

Talk to you from Tampa, where I’ll get to hang with the always-crazy Mimi

Here were the lines tonight:

Niklas Backstrom, Josh Harding.

Brent Burns, Kim Johnsson, Nick Schultz, Martin Skoula, Marc-Andre Bergeron, Erik Reitz.

Andrew Brunette, Mikko Koivu, Antti Miettinen.

Colton Gillies, Eric Belanger, Tomas Mojzis.

Stephane Veilleux, James Sheppard, Cal Clutterbuck.

Derek Boogaard, Benoit Pouliot, Craig Weller.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 16th, 2008 at 7:09 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.