Why Versteeg is legit, Byfuglien heating up, Brodeur to debut tonight and more…

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Exciting opening and ending in Minnesota between the Wild and Canadiens but what a horribly dull game otherwise.

The Wild controlled much of the match outshooting Montreal 35-19. That's not particularly surprising given the statistical trends of these two teams.

We also got to witness over 10 minutes of Minnesota Wild power play action, which was as horrible as it sounds. They went 0/4 including failing to record a single shot on goal during a five-minute power play.

The Wild power play continues to click at less than 10% and while they can blame last night's struggles on the absence of Ryan Suter (out sick, the team is hopeful that it is not the mumps) the season-long trend is that they simply have no clue how to score up a man. It's particularly disheartening because they were a league-average team last season. What's interesting is that they have actually generated more shot attempts on their power plays than they did last season so you could sell me that they have simply been extremely unlucky so far.

If it turns out that Suter is out for a while with the mumps, Jared Spurgeon is your immediate replacement. He skated over six minutes on the top power play unit last night.

The Wild scored 19 seconds in, which was the exciting opening. It was Jason Zucker's 10^th goal of the season. He is on pace for over 30 while shooting 18.9%. I think Zucker will be lucky to get to 25 as his shooting percentage is likely to drop. I'm a fan of his game but 14 minutes a night with limited power play time just isn't enough to make a hefty fantasy impact. Maybe next year.

Mikko Koivu assisted on that goal. I talked about him last week in the ramblings and everything I said there still holds true. He's starting to see a turnaround with a three-game point streak to get him up to 10 points in 24 games. Still time to buy low.

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The exciting end came with the Canadiens pressing down two and with their net empty. They managed one goal with 58 seconds remaining to make things interesting. That's basically all the offense the Canadiens were able to generate all game though.

Alex Galchenyuk was the lone goal-scorer for Montreal as he extended his scoring streak to three games.

Montreal only got one power play chance last night but it was spoiled 26 seconds in as Jiri Sekac took a penalty of his own. Sekac was indeed back out there on the top unit as the Canadiens continue to experiment with power play configurations. I wonder if he didn't cost himself another chance with the top unit next time out because of the penalty.

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It was strange but watching the Blues-Blackhawks game I found myself heavily rooting for the Blackhawks to shell Jake Allen and chase him from the game. I wanted to catch a glimpse of Martin Brodeur. He'll go either tonight or Saturday so we'll see him soon enough but I just find him compelling. As much as I have ragged about his inability to stop the puck at league-average levels the past few years, I am still very interested in seeing the old man tend goal.