Marc-Andre Fleury makes his Wild debut between the pipes tonight!
Since the splash Bill Guerin made on Monday with his acquisition of the future hall of fame netminder, Wild fans have anticipated seeing him on the ice behind this fired up team. Tonight we get that as Fleury will start against the Columbus Blue Jackets.
The nine game game home stand got off to a rocky start, when the Wild dropped the opener 6-2 to Nashville. Since that game the Wild have struggled together four straight victories, giving up just five goals over that stretch.
Prior to the hoenstand the Wild had been sputtering a but and gotten very loose with their defensive responsibility. That has since reverted back to the structure we had seen through the first four months of the season. The new faces and confidence that Bill Guerin and Dean Evason have shown in this group have been at the foundation of the recent success.
Columbus took the first meeting two weeks back, when they turned the tables on the Wild, when Zach Werenski scored with goaltender Elvis Merzlikins on the bench for the extra attacker. The overtime went scoreless and Yegor Chinakhov sealed the win for CBJ in the skills competition.
Tonight is the first of a back to back for the Wild as they host Division leading Colorado tomorrow. For Columbus this is the second of back to backs as they played in Winnipeg last night losing 4-3 in overtime after they rallied to tie it on a late powerplay goal by Oliver Bjorkstrand.
This will be the second straight game for the Wild catching a team on the second of back to backs after traveling, as Vancouver was in the same situation earlier this week. Vancouver showed little signs of fatigue despite their late arrival into the Twin Cities after traveling in the night. They came within a post of leaving the XCEL Energy Center with two points rather than the one they got after Joel Eriksson Ek's OT winner.
You can bet that Evason will be on top of his team to pressure the Jackets and finish every check to wear them down. He will use the Canucks game as an example of how if a team is left to hang around long enough they become very dangerous.
Their will be some extra energy in the house with Fleury's debut and the Wild need to feed off that energy from within and from 18,000+ in the stands.
It's always Hockey Day in The State of Hockey!