In Mikko Koivu’s first game as the official permanent  captain of the Wild he lead the team to their two goals and shootout victory.
In the first period it was Koivu’sshot that produced a nice rebound for Burns to flip it home. In the 3rd period scored a goal and another power play chance and then had the winning goal in the shootout as well.  I guess it’s only fitting that he dominated the first game as Captain.
The Avalanche gave the Wild an 10 minutes of one man advantage time and the Wild scored PPGs #9 & #10 (that’s the 2nd most [...]

Tonight should be an interesting night for more than one reason:
#1- It’s the firest Wild home game in quite some time.
#2- They are wearing their “Miller High Life” Jersey’s tonight.
#3 – Chuck Kobasew should make his Wild debut.
#4- It’s Koivu’s first game with the “C”.
That’s the good stuff. The bad stuff is that Colorado comes into the game with the 3rd largest margin of victory in the league and they are healthy. The Avs have been outstanding on both sides of the ice this year scoring 28 goals while only giving up 18.
I think the Wild have a first line [...]

BUT STILL MANAGE TO LOSE.
The 2-1 lost the the division rival Canucks was tough. It was the first game in my estimation that the Wild gave a solid effort for a full three periods. Defensively the team looked good, Backstrom was very good in goal.
The Wild figured to be a offensively challenged team before the season started but with Havlat,Pierre-Marc Bouchard, Petr Sykora and Cal Clutterbuck all out the Wild are pretty well offensively castrated from a roster point of view. They only mustered 18 shots on goal and not many of them were good scoring chances.
The news has not gotten [...]

Roberto Luongo was perhaps the best goalie in the division equalled only by the Wild’s Niklas Backstrom. At 30 years old he was signed to a 12 year, $64 million contract that should be the last of his career.
After relatively unimpressive stints with the Islanders and Pathers from 1990-2006 when he was traded to the Canucks. In exchange for Luongo, Lukas Krajicek, and Sergei Shirokov the Pathers received Todd Bertuzzi,Bryan Allen,and Alex Auld.  To this point it looks like the Canucks got the better end of the trade with Bertuzzi  only playing a few games for them and with Allen [...]