Spurgeon's second goal lifts Wild to exhibition-opening win

Let me just say it's good to be covering hockey games again.

Now that I got that out of the way, the Wild beat the Oilers 4-3 tonight here at the Rex behind two goals from Edmonton native Jared Spurgeon, one goal from Fridley native Jarod Palmer and one from Pierre-Marc Bouchard.

Matt Cullen had two assists and Guillaume Latendresse, Brett Bulmer and Kyle Brodziak one apiece.

The overshadowed story in this game was the tremendous return by Josh Harding, who has been outstanding in practice and scrimmages. But tonight, in 30:51 of work, Harding stopped 14 of 15 shots and made a couple huge saves on Taylor Hall.

Coach Mike Yeo, who won in his debut as an NHL head coach (OK, it doesn't count, but kinda sorta when you consider the Wild went winless last preseason), just said, "Unbelievable. Unbelievable," about Harding's return from a torn ACL and MCL last Sept. 24.

The Wild played an awesome first period to build a 3-0 lead, but the Oilers roared back in a second period in which the Wild defended for 20 minutes. But Spurgeon scored the winner with 1:46 left when he wristed a shot through traffic.

Good sign for Spurgeon, whom the Wild hopes picks up some of the offensive slack lost by trading Brent Burns. Good sign is he's getting shots on net, which Yeo loves. But he was also by far the Wild's best defenseman on the defensive side of the puck.

On the game, and particularly the poor second period, Yeo said, "It was a tale of two games, that's for sure. I can honestly say that I fully, 100 percent, completely expected that to happen."

Yeo said of his system, which I wrote about in Wednesday's paper (take a gander), "It's a demanding way to play. We ask a lot of the guys, and they were doing it to a T in the first period. But as soon as you kind of relax a little bit and you don't pay attention to details the same way, you don't manage the puck the same way and you don't match their desperation, things can turn quickly. And that second period was a perfect example of it."

But Yeo was really happy with the way the guys responded in the third period, and that was a period in which the Wild had to kill of three minutes of a five-minute major to Darroll Powe for boarding Taylor Fedun.

Fedun played on the power play, but he later left the game. I'd be surprised if Powe gets further discipline though.

What else?

--The Latendresse-Cullen-Bouchard line was fantastic.

--Brett Bulmer, I finally saw what the Wild loves about him. Pure guts, gets under everybody's skin, stations himself at the net, can skate. Once he puts on weight and gets more experience, he could be a bigtime power forward for this franchise.

--Liked Clayton Stoner's game.

--Matt Kassian clobbered Darcy Hordichuk on their first shift on the ice together. Kassian was jumping to the defense of Nate Prosser, whom Hordichuk took a run at. Three big punches by Kassian knocked down Hordichuk.

That's it for me as I head back to Minnesota. Brian Stensaas is covering Wednesday's practice, although I'll head down to the X after I land from Edmonton. So either Brian or myself will blog. If it's Brian, I'll be back with you Thursday before my flight to St. Louis.