Last night's preseason opener looked like a preseason opener, but there were some positives to take away from the 2-1 loss.

Of course the first thing that will be brought up is the game winning goal, which of course never appeared to cross the goal line, but with no video review the goal stood. Again no big deal it is preseason and that goal is not going to make or break any player making or not making the club.

Andrew Hammond looked good in his Wild debut, stopping 28 of 30 shots, per the final statistics of course. The bigger picture saw Hammond play a solid game tracking the puck through traffic and making some big saves.

Ryan Murphy is in the mix for the Wild 7th defense position or 8th if they elect to keep eight which is highly unlikely. Murphy logged the most minutes of all Wild skaters and had two very good scoring chances only to be thwarted by Jets goalie Laurent Brossoit. Murphy proved last season that he has the speed and skill to play in the league, now he needs to prove it on a full time basis.

Nick Seeler picked up where he left off last season leading the team with three hits and getting into a third period scrap with Brendan Lemieux. Seeler has the inside track on the third D pair alongside of free agent signee Greg Pateryn, who himself had a couple of hits to go along with 3 shots on goal.

That leaves Gustav Olofsson, Murphy, Nate Prosser, and to a lesser extent Carson Soucy and Louie Nelpedio vying for one spot on the Wild blueline.

Wild camp has it's share of storylines with Jordan Greenway playing with Charlie Coyle and Joel Eriksson Ek, forming a line that has both size, speed, and skill, a combination that the Wild have not seen in recent years from a trio.

The competition for the bottom defense pair and 7th d-man role will not likely be decided until the very end of camp based on the number of players vying for those roster spots and the varying stages that each is in his development and roster options availability.

The Hammond Stalock battle is another to keep a close eye on but to me it still appears as Stalock has the inside track as his job to lose.

Nino Niederreiter and Charlie Coyle, each coming off injury riddled seasons that saw both players production drop significantly from the previous season. Both are fully recovered and looking to pick up where they left off at the end of the 2016-17 season.

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