3 things to know: Parise ‘hat trick’ leads Wild to comeback win

Mikael Granlund fed a pass to the slot where Parise was open and ripped a shot over Semyon Varlamov’s glove.

That’s a heck of a statement from one of the leaders of that team after such a terrible start in the first period for the Wild. Parise scored twice, while Thomas Vanek and Nino Niederreiter added the other two. Zach Parise did have a hat trick. Parise’s response encapsulated the beat-you-with-goals-not-fists mentality Yeo wants for his team. “There’s a lot of energy that goes into morning skates”, Landeskog said.

Jarome Iginla, Erik Johnson and Gabriel Landeskog had goals in the first period for Colorado.

But then Parise, in what may have been his best game since signing with the Wild, sparked a hard-to-match rally, starting with an incredible play 5:07 into the third period.

BOULDER, Colo. (AP) – Joffrey Lauvergne had 18 points and eight rebounds, and the Denver Nuggets beat the Chicago Bulls 112-94 on Thursday night in an exhibition at the University of Colorado’s Coors Event Center.

Varlamov stopped 19 of 20 shots before unraveling in the third period. You don’t see cliff drops like this in win probability too often in National Hockey League games, and we can thank Rinkstats.com for this painful graphic from the Avalanche perspective. All around poor defensive coverage from a team protecting a lead, especially from Barrie, who didn’t seem to play with the confidence we’ve come to expect from him tonight.

Boiled down to momentum and Colorado couldn’t get it back.

The second period saw a few positivity from the Wild as Parise scored his first goal – and it a was a sweet one – when the Avalanche turned the puck over in their end. “We don’t have a long-term plan right now”, he said…. We just couldn’t stop it.

Zach Parise hit the post with his first shot of the game but he was on target when it counted most.

After that, it was all Avs in the opening period as Iginla beat Dubnyk with a wrist shot, Johnson knocked in a shot off a slap shot and Landeskog added a third by tipping in the puck following a carom off the boards. On a night with an unsatisfying result for the Avalanche, this was a satisfying play the power play unit can take a few confidence from. They certainly deserve credit for what they did in the last 15 minutes, but I thought we played well until then.

The Avalanche went from a basement dweller, to a playoff contender, and back again in the span of three seasons and are hoping to contonue the trend and get back into the postseason this year.

Teenager Mikko Rantanen showed a few nerves in his National Hockey League debut, with the puck rolling under his stick on his first scoring chance. Nathan MacKinnon tops the list, making his debut on October 2, 2013, against Anaheim at 18 years, 31 days. Matt Duchene and Carl Soderberg both had rough nights for the Avs, and the work of Granlund when he was matched up against those two certainly contributed to those struggles. Coach Patrick Roy said Stuart and Gormley were not among the top six defensemen in the preseason, but he plans to use all eight defensemen during the regular season.