Niklas Backstrom's knee is fine, as is Matt Hackett's glove hand.
The Wild -- or a bunch of youngsters and minor-league vets wearing Wild sweaters -- grinded out a 1-0 win here at Scottrade tonight over the St. Louis Blues.
Backstrom, who missed the early training camp scrimmages with a sore knee, looked terrific with 18 saves in two periods of work. He made a number of highlight-reel stops, but that was nothing compared to the workload Hackett faced in the third.
The Wild spent the entire period in its zone, and despite being outshot 14-1, Hackett shut the door to complete the shutout. The young Hackett, who helped lead Houston to the Calder Cup Finals last spring, made a couple huge saves, especially a dynamite glove save to rob Andy McDonald from between the circles.
He also robbed Jonathan Cheechoo late right from the goalmouth.
This was a pure evaluation game for the Wild. Let's put it this way: The only players in this game who have resided in the Wild's NHL locker room during training camp were Backstrom, Eric Nystrom, Jared Spurgeon, Jordan Hendry and Brad Staubitz.
In exhibition games, teams must dress eight "regulars," but regulars constitute any combination of players who played 30 NHL games last season, 100 in their career (i.e. Jed Ortmeyer is a regular) or a first-round pick from the preceding draft (i.e. Zack Phillips is a regular).
The Wild got to take a look at the four defensmen vying for a spot -- Nate Prosser, Justin Falk, Marco Scandella and Hendry. Prosser was real good, I thought, as was Scandella, who played 24 minutes. Falk had bigtime problems the first two periods, and Hendry was mostly good except for a bad turnover at one juncture.
