Beaulieu clearly had some pedigree given that Montreal selected him in the first round of the 2011 draft after he put together two straight seasons of 45 points in the QMJHL. But he never quite found his footing with the Canadiens, moving on after 225 NHL games spread over five seasons. He played another 89 games with the Sabres over the past two years and now makes his third stop in Winnipeg.

But there’s one area that has been problematic for the team all season: the power play. That won’t come as a shock to Predators fans who’ve watched this team struggle on the man advantage all season. The Predators are a great five-on-five team, yet they have failed to be consistently effective on the power play, currently sitting 30th in the league.

St. Louis is also allowing too many grade-A chances against. In their back-to-back losses to Carolina and Dallas, the Blues outshot each opponent and held them to relatively low shot counts. Even so, the shots they did allow were in prime real estate and difficult for the goalies to stop.

The fact that the Stars were able to find success in games on the road against strong teams without their resilient captain to lead the way proves the steps they’ve taken toward being the team they truly desire to be.

The Minnesota Wild have re-entered the playoff battle after rather a miserable run. It was all powered with a message sent to the players by General Manager Paul Fenton. After big moves, the Wild responded to the call as Head Coach Bruce Boudreau wanted to fulfill his commitment. Resurgent Minnesota Wild looks to fuel their playoff hopes in an unexpected way.

As we have already seen, he has a knack for scoring important goals, albeit the Colorado Avalanche did lose an overtime game again on Monday night –worthy of it’s own ranting article. Nonetheless, Brassard put himself in the right place at the right time, burying an excellent pass from an exciting young defenseman Ryan Graves.