A sold-out crowd packed into the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul on Thursday night to see the Minnesota Wild take on the Florida Panthers in the 2023-24 season opener. With a newly crowned captain, Kirill Kaprizov and his BFF, Mats Zuccarello expected to be the top contenders for the first goal of the season honors, it was a homegrown, Minnesota-native, Brock Faber who claimed this year’s first tally. About his goal, Faber commented “It was more just a shot to get it down there than to pick a corner, but I got lucky, everyone just kind of started skating toward me, so I figured something good happened.”
Faber, from Maple Grove and former Minnesota Gopher, scored at the 7:54 mark of the first period from near the blue line after taking a pass from Matt Boldy. Panthers’ goalie, Sergei Bobrovsky who led the Panthers to a Stanley Cup appearance last season, had a lot of traffic in front of the goalie crease, which helped to screen the shot by Faber. This goal was a number of things for the Minnesota rookie – his first NHL goal, first career point and with MN goalie, Filip Gustavsson pitching a shutout in a 2-0 victory, the Faber goal also served as his first career game winning goal. Speaking of “Gus Bus”…
Gustavsson looked as though he was already in mid-season form, making 41 saves against a high-powered Florida team. With a slow start to the game for the Wild, being outshot 8-1 during the first few minutes and helping to kill off each of the Panthers’ power plays, Gus was tested early and often. In his post-game press conference, Wild Head Coach Dean Evason stated, “Our defensive zone was good, our penalty kill was good, our goaltender was great”. Obviously, keeping Florida out of the scoring column hints at a good defensive game, Gustavsson almost single-handedly won the game himself and was rewarded as the First Star of the Game.
The second period saw Joel Eriksson Ek score his first goal of the year on the power play, with assists going to Mats Zuccarello and Kirill Kaprizov – both getting their first assists of the season. Just seven seconds into the power play, Zuccarello tried a cross-ice pass to Marcus Johansson when a Florida defender blocked the pass and put the puck within the reach of Eriksson Ek. He gathered in the puck and fired it to the back of the net.
Wild youngster, Marco Rossi momentarily had his first goal from a sharp angled shot at the side of the net, before Florida challenged the play for being offsides. Much to the dismay of Rossi and Wild fans, the goal was disallowed after video review, indeed, showed that a Wild player had entered the offensive zone ahead of the puck. It was still a beauty of a shot.
The third period brought more shots from the outside and in-close on Gustavsson that he turned away time-after-time. Seeing as Gus Bus is the #1 goalie of the future for the Wild (or maybe the present as well), having Marc-Andre Fleury – who is 8 wins away from passing Patrick Roy for 2nd place all-time in wins, as a second option, puts the Wild in great shape this season in net once again.
Having young stars like Faber to take the place of former Wild players, such as Matt Dumba who departed for Arizona this season, will certainly help the Wild during the next couple of years while they are in salary-cap hell due to the bought-out contracts of Zach Parise and Ryan Suter. Extending the contracts of Mats Zuccarello, Ryan Hartman and Marcus Foligno give the Wild a really solid core of veterans and youthful, skillful talent up and down the roster.
For now, the Wild are undefeated, Gus Bus has a perfect save percentage and Wild fans cannot be more excited about another season of Wild hockey. Minnesota now begins a two-game Canadian road trip, facing the Toronto Maple Leafs on Saturday night at 6:00 PM on ESPN+ and the Montreal Canadiens on Tuesday, also on ESPN+ with a 6:00 PM start. Stay tuned for more Wild coverage this season. Until next time, Go Wild!!!!
The Morning Skate 