Noon Number for 9-9-2013: 7

While the Minnesota Wild didn't send, save for Matt Dumba, any of it's top top prospects, it was still interesting to see if they would be able to compete against the prospects of other teams. Well, compete they did. But they lost all three games, and play the 7th place game sometime today (probably early today- they've got 4 games to play today).

Things, obviously, could have gone better.

Shootout performance would have made a much bigger difference, as the Wild took two of their losses in the gimmick. And looking at the boxscores, we can see a familiar potential reason for losing: the Wild were outshot on the tournament 99-83. And in one of their games, they actually outshot their opponent (St. Louis) 34-22. So, while that may have been more of a hard-luck loss, getting outshot 77-49 in two games doesn't make the other two losses a fluke.

But among the negatives, there were highlights. Raphael Bussieres scored two goals in the three games, with Tyler Graovac getting another goal, as well as an assist. Matthew Dumba, Erik Haula, and Kurtis Gabriel also got assists. Zack Phillips put up a lot of shots (15), but was snakebit. There are small things to take away from this tournament.

It would have been nice to see the Wild do better, of course, but these prospect tournaments are just for development, and a little bit of fun.

Training camp is in two days!