5 instant reactions after impressive Wild opening night win over Predators

Minnesota Wild hockey is finally back! And things aren't sad yet!

We're all conditioned to assume the worst when it comes to Minnesota Sports, but the Wild got their season off to a pretty great start on Thursday night in Nashville. It's just one game, and there's a brutal stretch awaiting the team that will test them right away, but for now there's reason to celebrate.

Let's not waste any time -- much like the Wild didn't in getting the season off to a good start -- and dive right into some knee-jerk reactions from the opening night win over the Predators.

Jesper Wallstedt is a life saver already

It took less than five minutes for the Wild's newly revamped penalty kill to see some action, but it was Jesper Wallstedt who saved the day both literally and figuratively.

Steven Stamkos nearly had the first goal of the game at around the 16:40 mark, but Wally had other plans. He made his first incredible save of the season, stopping a wicked shot by Stamkos and keeping the game, at the time, scoreless.

It's more than just the save itself, though. We all watched the Wild's penalty kill wet its pants in the playoffs last year which is a major reason why the unit got re-tooled this summer. If the first minute of seeing the new penalty kill unit resulted in a goal...those are vibes Minnesota doesn't need.

Thankfully, that didn't happen, and the rest of the night saw the Wild kill off almost all of the penalty minutes that got thrown against them. It's one thing to see Wally balling out already but to see him bailing out his guys is at least a sign that things won't be as disastrous as they looked a handful of months ago.

Quinn Hughes is still a wizard

It's the Robert Pattinson Someone Get These Beggars Out Of Here line except it's Can Someone Get This Guy A Contract and it's aimed squarely at Quinn Hughes. He wasted little time reminding the Wild why they need to figure out a way to get him under contract before it's too late, as he made a difference right away on Thursday night.

Two plays stood out in particular. One was his third period goal, where he did what the Wild seemed scared to do most of the night and shot the puck. His goal put Minnesota up 3-1 and essentially put the game away early, but his play in the first period was more impressive.

Dancing with the puck to miraculously keep it in the zone, Hughes drew a penalty that resulted in a power play goal for the Wild and a commanding 2-0 lead.

It's the little things like this, stuff that won't show up on the stat sheet but matters just as much, that serve as reminders of how important he is to the Wild's championship chances.

Bobby Brink is redeeming himself

More movie references? How about a and totally redeemed yourself from Dumb & Dumber? That's how it felt watching Bobby Brink, who didn't exactly impress anyone during the postseason last year and had yet to really live up to the trade Minnesota made at the deadline to get him.

It sounds like David Jiricek has been a total bust for the Flyers, so the bar to clear for winning the trade is low. But expectations for Brink remain high and he started to inch toward reaching that level in the season opener.

Brink finished the game with an assist and should have had a second if Ryan Hartman hadn't been called for Goalie Interference. We'll count it, though, because Brink was in all the right places at the right times and looked exactly like the kind of player the Wild need him to be as part of some key offensive depth.

It’s only one game and I’m sick of Ryan Hartman

This is the "someone get these beggars out of here" line. Or maybe it's the other big Robert Pattinson performance of the year: "You see how this looks".

That's where the comparisons between RobPat and Ryan Hartman end, because the two couldn't be on further ends of the success spectrum. While Pattison is on top of the world, Hartman is already getting on everyone's nerves with some pretty questionable decisions.

The biggest knock against him was that aforementioned disallowed goal that happened because of goalie interference. It was a questionable call, but Hartman being on the wrong end of a decision that went against the Wild and could have flipped momentum is a little too par-for-the-course.

While that play is going to get most of the attention, another gaffe came a little later when he whiffed bad on a breakaway scoring chance. What should have been the third goal of the game and an early dagger instead turned into a shot that somehow sailed wide of the net despite Hartman being seemingly too close to miss.

It's hard to bury a guy after just one game, and Hartman has pulled out some moments of redemption, but it's not exactly promising that he's already looking like a total liability less than 60 minutes into the season.

Blake Coleman already looks worth the price Minnesota paid

We aren't going to end a negative note, because largely the first game of the season was a pretty...Wild success. A big reason for that was the incredibe performance by Blake Coleman, who made his debut with Minnesota after coming over in a trade with Calgary this summer.

That trade cost the Wild a pretty penny, as Jake Middleton and three draft picks crossed the border the get Coleman to St. Paul. It didn't take long for that deal to start paying off; Coleman finished his first game with the Wild by scoring what went down in the stat sheet as a game-winning goal, and earning first-star honors.

It's only one game but the Wild are already getting exactly what they needed to get out of Coleman. If he can provide the kind of offensive boost he gave in Nasvhille on Thursday, then a lot of the angst Wild fans felt watching things sputter last May will go away in a hurry.

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