NHL Recap: Opening Night 2013
By Josh Hill
St. Louis Blues 6, Detroit Red Wings 0
The Blues certainly didn’t follow St. Louis out of the lockout and into their matchup with the Red Wings on Saturday. St. Louis blasted Detroit and shut out the Wings 6-0 to start their season out soaring. Nothing seemed to be able to stop the Blues, as they scored twice on Power Plays and once short handed. Vladimir Tarasenko and Chris Stewart both finished a goal shy of posting dual hat tricks in the season debut, but Patrik Berglund and T.J. Oshie decided they wanted in on the scoring bonanza as well.
As for the Red Wings, they gave up six goals between two different goalies and were flat all around on Saturday. Detroit started Jimmy Howard in net, but ended up splitting time with Jonas Gustavsson. Howard was beat up pretty bad on some one-on-one scoring plays, while the Blues’ Jaroslav Halak looked brilliant pitching his first shutout of the season. It’s just one game and lockout fatigue is going to be blamed for early season hiccups, but it’s not going to take that big of a slide to sink a team in this 48 games season.
Colorado Avalanche 2, Minnesota Wild 4
The Wild debuted at home and trotted out hometown kid Zach Parise in front of a packed Xcel Energy Center. It was Colorado’s task to spoil the homecoming for Parise and slap Minnesota back to reality. It looked like they were going to do that initially, as the Av’s jumped out to a quick 1-0 lead. But the Wild surged back in the second period and scored three unanswered goals, two of them by Dany Heatley. I predicted before the season that Heatley would benefit greatly from having both Parise and Ryan Suter on his line and he did his best to make me look like a guru on Saturday night.
Both of Heatley’s goals came on Power Plays, which means right out of the gate the Av’s are going to have to monitor how they play the Penalty Kill. Again, lockout fatigue is the fallback excuse, but you can’t allow the same guy to score twice in the same period in the same exact situation.
Columbus Blue Jackets 3, Nashville Predators 2 — F/SO
We had both out first overtime game and our first shootout victory of the 2013 season take place in Nashville on Saturday. Martin Erat did his best to make Predator fans forget that they lost Ryan Suter this offseason and scored the first goal of the new season less than a minute into the game. While that lifted Predator fans, it jabbed Jackets fans right in the gut, but luckily Columbus bounced back.
The first period featured the most scoring in the game, with the score being 2-1 in favor of Nashville at the start of the second. Artem Anisimov tied the game up but the scoring dried up after that and we were sent to overtime. When the extra period of hockey didn’t help settle anything, we were off to the first shootout of the season. Artem Anisimov scored first for the Jackets but he was matched by David Legwand two shooters later. Derick Brassard scored for Columbus which left the game in the hands of Craig Smith who straight up missed the shot, sending the Predators to their first loss of the season and giving Jackets fans reason to be hopeful.
Phoenix Coyotes 3, Dallas Stars 4
The Coyotes made their deepest run in franchise history into the Stanley Cup playoffs last season, but the quest to return there is suffering from a case of lockout fatigue. One thing going for the Dallas Stars is the fact that they loaded up on players well past their prime but still happen to be better at hockey than most of the guys playing the game. However, when they signed guys like Jaromir Jagr and Ray Whitney it was apparent they wouldn’t be able to last an 82 game season. Luckily for the Stars, this season is just 48 games which means Dallas is going to likely be a force all season long.
The Stars will be a team to watch this season, as this whole experimental roster thing could either look really good or extremely stupid come April or May.
Anaheim Ducks 7, Vancouver Canucks 3
If you’re a Canucks fan, avert your eyes. Vancouver kicked off their season with a 7-3 spanking via the Anaheim Ducks — a score that surpassed our previous total for the highest scoring game of opening day. A combined 10 goals were scored at Rogers Arena on Saturday, with Teemu Selanne and Daniel Winnik leading the scoring for the Ducks with 4 goals combined.
Blood bath is going to be misspelled ‘fatigue’ in the morning papers in Vancouver, but something is apparently very wrong with the Canucks. Roberto Luongo has been the focus of a lot of trade talks recently, but after his less than stellar debut in 2013, Vancouver might want to wait until his value stops free-falling to make a move. Luongo split time in the net with Cory Schneider on Saturday, but while Luongo allowed two goals it was Schneider that let in five of them. Vancouver has a good chance to rebound against an Edmonton team tomorrow that has yet to drop the puck this season.
Stay tuned to Fansided.com every night for the complete rundown of all the days NHL action.