Wild Wrap Up: #nojetsno

In what was suppose to be an excellent game, the Wild put on a somewhat disappointing performance. Mikko Koivu, Zach Parise, Jason Pominville, Ryan Suter, Jonas Brodin and Jared Spurgeon made their pre-season debuts against a team that had been demolished by basically the Iowa Wilds roster.

The first period was all Minnesota Wild. The Parise-Koivu-Pominville line was putting on a clinic for the Jets defense. Charlie Coyle was putting together a solid game and just skating circles around Jets players. Carson McMillan scored. Seriously, he scored.

Ondrej Pavelec played phenomenally in net. Without him, the Jets easily would have gone to the locker room after 1 down by 4.

The second period started off well, but then the wheels came off. By the end of the period, the Jets were leading and Wild fans were scratching their heads trying to figure out what went wrong.

Marco Scandella struggled so badly at the end of the period that Spurgeon chose to trying to skate his way through multiple Jet players instead of pass the puck to him.

The third period started out with a lot of back and forth. The Wild have a few good chances, as did the Jets. Brodin made a very rare mistake that the Jets almost converted into a goal.

The Kaptain was true to his strong face off form, winning 79% of his faceoffs after 2 periods. He kept on his game and forced a turnover in the middle of th 3rd, and got the puck to Parise who then found Suter for the tying goal.

Things started to get crazy after that goal. At one point, Niklas Backstrom was goaltending with a regular hockey stick, and Coyle was deflecting pucks out of the Wild net.

Of course, just like every good storyline, this game went into overtime. After Parise and Koivu were denied, Pominville scored on a filthy, yet beautiful goal to lead the Wild to victory.

Coyle dominated in the faceoff circle, winning 80% of his draws (12 of 15). The Kaptian won 17 of 22 for 77%.

Parise said after the game that he felt the Wild preformed "Okay", but that the team will get better. Coach Mike Yeo echoed that sentiment by saying that the game was far from perfect, especially for the first line. However, It was exactly what the coaches were expecting from everyone playing in their first game of the season.

Yeo raved about Coyle and Mikael Granlund, both of whom are making a tough case to make the team out of camp. As usual this pre-season. Granlund looked fantastic for most of the night

The Wild play in Columbus on Monday night, and after that game the team is expected to make their first round of substantial roster cuts.