Traverse City Day 5: Wild Win Big, Mitchell Gets A Hat Trick

The Minnesota Wild wrapped up the Traverse City Prospects Tournament grabbing fifth place in a 6-3 win over the New York Rangers on Tuesday.

The Wild, with invitee Brandon Whitney between the pipes for the second straight game, opened the scoring with Brady Brassart tallying at the 12:35 mark of the first period on a feed from Raphael Bussieres and Dylan Labbe. (Or maybe the second assist was actually Christian Folin. More on that later.)

The Rangers responded 13 seconds later with a goal from the much-talked-about Kevin Hayes, who finished his senior year at Boston College last year, then decided not to sign with Chicago, who drafted him, and signed with the Rangers as a free agent. He put up 27 goals and 38 assists through 40 games last season for BC playing on a line with Johnny Gaudreau (36-44-80) and Bill Arnold (14-39-53).

The Wild responded shortly after with an unassisted power play goal from Matt Dumba. From that point on, the Wild would run away with the game.

Zack Mitchell led the team on the night with a hat trick, potting the only second period marker for either team with an assist to Dumba and invitee Ryan Walters. In the third, Mitchell opened up the scoring with his second of the night from center Tyler Graovac to make it 4-1 Wild.

The Rangers made a game of it then, scoring two quick ones to pull within a goal.

But the Wild would score two more and put the game out of reach, getting one from Walters, with assists goal to Chase Lang and Mitchell, and Mitchell completing the hat trick with assists going to Pavel Jenys and Alex Gudbranson. (Wild.com says that the official scoring, which credits the final goal to Graovac, is incorrect.)

Unsurprisingly, Wild assistant general manager Brett Flahr gave the team’s star of the game to Mitchell, who scored two of his goals on the power play, with the team putting in four power play goals total.

I’d give you some breakdowns of scoring over the entire tournament, but the official box scores have been contested by a number of teams and things get hazier from there with Wild.com alternately crediting Mitchell with the sixth and fifth goal of the game, but not both. Christian Folin is given an assist on the game’s opening goal, where the box score has Labbe. The official website had double the St. Louis game stats as well at one point, causing all sorts of havoc. Suffice to say, it’s not entirely clear.

However, it is clear that Wild defenseman Gustav Olofsson, Dumba, and Folin had great tournaments. Invitee Ryan Walters surprised, finishing the tournament with a tournament high six points (3-3-6). (Though there is still hockey in progress at the time of publication.) There has been a lot of praise for Graovac throughout the tournament and praise for the play of Reid Duke and Jenys late in the tournament.

The majority of the team will be heading to St. Paul soon for training camp, which opens on Thursday and has players hitting the ice for the first time on Friday. There will also be an open practice on Saturday.