ST. PAUL - Coming into tonight's contest the Minnesota Wild currently had the edge over the Florida Panthers with their 18-9-3 all-time record and 10-2-3 record at the Xcel Energy center.
The Panthers on the other hand, carried their 5-9-1-2 record, when starting the season on the road, to Minnesota and absolutely dominated the first ten or so minutes of the game.
"I thought we were back on our heels in the first period," Wild head coach Dean Evason said on tonights start. "They're such an aggressive team, and we talked about that this morning, it's how much pressure they put on you and they did. But we liked the way the guys adjusted."
That was until Brock Faber notched his first goal of his career stopping all the Panthers momentum. The play developed after Matt Boldy pick pocketed Sam Reinhart in the neutral zone and glided into the offensive zone before dropping a puck off to Faber at the top of the blue line.
Faber’s blast from the point carried an .388 expected goals average after Boldy’s takeaway and entry. It was a deflating goal to let up for Sergei Bobrovsky after his team was outshooting the Wild 11-2 before Faber’s goal. The Panthers finished the period with 13 shots.
After a clean first period in terms of penalties for Florida, the Panthers went to the box which sent the Wild to the power play and their heavy emphasis they spent on the power play throughout camp worked as Joel Eriksson Ek scored his first of the year on a net-front scramble.
Mats Zuccarello caught a puck from Kirill Kaprizov before trying to find Marcus Johansson on the right side. But his pass deflected off the stick of Oliver Ekman-Larsson and to the slot for Ek who, with a little deke to his forehand, made it 2-0 Wild.
Roughly three minutes later the Wild’s third line got in on the rush and with the help of Marcus Foligno’s takeaway and Freddy Gaudreau’s unreal set up pass, Marco Rossi scored his first career goal.
Unfortunately for Rossi and the Wild, the play was reviewed after Panthers’ head coach, Paul Maurice challenged for offsides. The play was determined to be offsides and Rossi will have to wait for his first career NHL goal another day.
Rossi’s overturned goal was one of the best goals you could score as a line. It is exactly how you draw up a forecheck. Foligno came in hard on Niko Mikkola and forced a turnover onto the stick of Gaudreau who outmuscled Dmitry Kulikov before centering, behind his back, a pass to Rossi in the slot.
"Almost the same goal in our last preseason game," Evason said. "Moose gets in there, makes the hit and Freddy gets in there and makes a play and Rossi scores. We think that line is going to provide us with some offense, and unfortunately they didn't get rewarded but that's what they can do."
The goal would have been given an expected goals value of .488 if it would have counted.
Gustavsson looked sharp
You can't not talk about what Filip Gustavsson did in tonights 2-0 win over the Florida Panthers. The 6-foot-2 goaltender stopped all 41 shots he faced tonight in what was the fourth time in Wild history the team has opened the season with a shutout.
The native of Sweden had a breakout year last year for the Wild where he went 22-9-7 with a 2.10 goals-against average and a .931 save percentage before rolling into the playoffs as the team's starter.
The former Pittsburgh Penguins draft pick was rewarded in the offseason with a three-year contract with an AAV of $3.75M after his stellar season and has now picked up right where he left off.
“Well, I think some of our best chances never got to the net, Maurice said. "They did a really good job blocking shots. There’s going to be some things.
"That’s a good defensive team. They play a good hard structure. They blocked a bunch of shots. But it’s just always the basics. It’s traffic and timing. We’ve got to get the right traffic at the right time. But I’m not going to complain about it. He made some good saves, and when your goalie plays a game like that you should have a chance to win.”
Analytics
Kaprizov led the team in controlled zone entries with eight.
Boldy led the team in shot assists with three and carried an expected goals value per shot assist .964 (.321 average).
Zuccarello led the team in controlled zone exits with 11 and had a 100 percent success rate in both zone exits and zone entries.
Rossi led the team in expected goals with .676 on two shots.
All data tracked by Dylan Loucks.