JGD 2: Jets And Wild Renew Growing Hostilities

After their previous meeting in the pre-season a week ago where the Wild topped the Jets by a 5-1 score in game that had seen a fair amount of chippy play, coach Paul Maurice remarked that both teams were starting to develop a healthy dislike for each other.

Tonight the two teams go at it for real with the Jets re-inserting a couple of gritty old-standbys into the lineup while the Wild should be a bit extra snarly and looking for two points after a disappointing season opening loss against St. Louis.

6:00PM CST ** Xcel Center – St. Paul, Minnesota

TV: Sportsnet One – Radio: TSN 1290

Yes, your eyes aren’t deceiving you that is Alex Burmistrov on the 3rd line, Chris Thorburn inserted into the 4th line and Mark Stuart on the 3rd pairing. Jets fans may groan at the thought, but while Burmi maybe the replacement for an injured Bryan Little and Perreault is moved up into that 2nd line center spot, clearly Maurice wants to get all his players into some sort of game action early in the season. Is this a one time deal for Thor and Stu or is it a case of Maurice going back to old (and some would argue less effective) standbys? We won’t truly know that answer until next Thursday.

You can also argue it wasn’t as if Chiarot was overly effective on Thursday night, so it’s a good time to give Stuart – who did have a pretty good camp – a look to see if he can be any better with Postma.

Hutchinson was first off the ice this morning for the game-day skate, so he likely will get the start tonight.

The Wild’s season opener in St. Louis was a case of the team seemingly just going through the motions – the first period saw the Wild only manage two shots on goal just to give an indication of how poor they started – in a rather disappointing loss to the Blues. To that end, new Wild coach Bruce Boudreau put the team through a very brisk practice on Friday stressing that the team needed to be more physical and up-tempo, so Jets fans can expect a bit more of a snarly bunch facing the Jets on Saturday night.

Didn’t take long to get Patrik Laine with Wheeler and Scheifele did it? Expect to see fireworks from this trio as Laine looked more comfortable with taking charge as the game went on.

It didn’t take long for Jets fans to overreact to the news that Thorburn and Stuart were back in the lineup, so would it surprise anyone if Thorburn had a goal and a couple of points and Stuart had a great game on the blueline, just to ‘convince’ the coach they need to stay in the lineup?

The Wild will be fired up to be at home and extra eager to not drop a second game to a division rival. The Jets will be game, but not enough… 4-2 Wild.