The Minnesota Wild flipped the calendar over to 2018, and added a missing piece to the line-up. Yep, Zach Parise made his season debut in front of 19,029 fans packed into a much warmer Xcel Energy Center. The Wild responded with an utter tail kicking of the Panthers in 5-1 fashion. Matt Cullen, Eric Staal, and even Charlie Coyle scored a random empty-net goal to put send everyone out into the cold happy with that performance.
The Panthers opened the game by sending Aleksander Barkov into Devan Dubnyk just 41 seconds into the game.