Eric Staal, Joel Eriksson Ek to make exhibition debuts tonight vs. Colorado

The Wild, which won its exhibtion opener, 2-1, against the Buffalo Sabres on Monday night, hosts the Colorado Avalanche tonight.

Jason Zucker scored the winner with 4.6 seconds left last night on a power play. He teed up a Matt Dumba setup with Mike Reilly getting the other assist. Kurtis Gabriel scored the tying goal on a delayed penalty and Alex Stalock made 39 saves in the win.

"I think it was like a first game," coach Bruce Boudreau said this morning. "A lot of mistakes from both teams, a lot of stuff that we're trying to implement that wasn't as good as you'd like on both sides. But there were some things that were good, too. I really liked the compete level of our team. Stalock was really good in goal. We took five penalties. It's great that they went 0 for 5. And our power play won us the game, and that might be something that's going to have to happen for our team a lot."

Boudreau said his first experience running a bench with assistants Scott Stevens and John Anderson went well. He said communication went well all game.

He said young defensemen Nick Seeler and Hunter Warner really stood out, and the best forward was Zucker and Charlie Coyle played a ton and played well.

It was Alex Tuch's exhibition debut.

"He had his bright spots," Boudreau said. "He can be a bull in a china shop."

On Gabriel, who's vying for a job, Boudreau said, "He did a good job. He controlled the puck in the corners. He played a simple game, which is what you want. At Braemar, he ended up scoring a lot of goals. He has a pretty good shot. It's underestimated."

Boudreau said he's looking forward to coaching his first game at home tonight. The Avs certainly didn't bring the maximum eight vets, but the Wild gave them approval. And as we all know, young lineups in exhibition games often come out winners because those players are the ones trying to make impressions and NHL vets try to avoid injury in these games.

Devan Dubnyk will get the start for the Wild tonight.

The top line will be Zucker-Eric Staal-Jason Pominville, meaning Staal is playing his first game in a Wild sweater.

Joel Eriksson Ek will make his NHL preseason debut. Tuch is playing again. Others expected to play include Reilly, Christian Folin, Jared Spurgeon, Jonas Brodin, Zac Dalpe, Gabriel, Tyler Graovac, Ryan Carter and Jordan Schroeder.

The game can be heard on KFAN.

The three home preseason games can be streamed on the FOX Sports GO app.

FOX Sports GO is available to customers of participating pay-TV providers on iOS, Android, Fire tablets and Fire phones, Amazon Fire TV and Fire TV Stick, Apple TV, Roku, Chromecast Support,
Windows devices, and online at FOXSportsGO.com. Fans can download the mobile app for free from the iTunes App Store, Google Play, Amazon App Store and Windows Store. To stream games, users will need to verify credentials by signing in with their pay-TV provider's user ID and password. There is no additional charge to use FOX Sports GO.
Talk to ya later.