ST. PAUL - Hockey is back, which means it's Wild season. Tonight the Wild are set to host the Florida Panthers for their first regular season game of the year. Here are some keys to the game for the Wild.
1.) Attack the defense
The Florida Panthers are a great team, we saw it last year when they went all the way to the Stanley Cup final before losing to the Vegas Golden Knights. They also where the leagues best team two years ago when they won the presidents trophy.
But they are set to start the year with their best two defenseman out of the lineup. Aaron Ekblad will start the year on LTIR for the Panthers and Brandon Montour who notched 73 points last year, will start the year on the IR.
The Panthers currently have two defensemen playing tonight against the Wild who played on the Panthers last year, Josh Mahura and Gustav Forsling. Florida signed Oliver Ekman-Larsson during the offseason after the Vancouver Canucks bought him out, they also signed Mike Reilly, a former Wild defender, after the Boston Bruins bought him out during the offseason.
The point is, the Panthers brought in two defenders who were bought out in the offseason, to replace both Ekblad and Montour. Nonetheless, the Wild need to find a way to expose the Panthers d-core and get to Sergei Bobrovsky early if they want to have success.
2.) Stay out of the box
Although the Panthers defense may be a little questionable coming into the season, their power play and offense isn't. They are still a very offensive team with Aleksander Barkov, Matthew Tkachuk, Sam Reinhart, Evan Rodrigues/Carter Verhaeghe, and Ekman-Larsson likely running the Panthers top power play.
During the 2022-23 season the Panthers finished sixth in the NHL in goals scored per game at 3.51, tied for sixth with the Pittsburgh Penguins in power-play goals scored on the year with 63, and tenth in the NHL in power play percentage at 22.83.
So that's why it would be a good game plan for the Wild to stay out of the box for tonights game against the Florida Panthers.