Parise picks up where he left off, scores in first preseason game

ST. PAUL -- It certainly won't count when it comes to record keeping purposes, but Zach Parise's goal late in the second period Thursday against the Dallas Stars will go down as a big one for the veteran forward.
As big as they can get in a preseason game, anyway.
Parise, who ended the regular season last year in red-hot fashion, scoring 12 goals in the final 18 games, also scored one goal in each of the three playoff games he played in before fracturing his sternum late in a Game 3 win against the Winnipeg Jets.

The injury forced him to miss the final two postseason contests then rehab for several weeks during the summer months.
And while there was never a danger that Parise would miss any time because of the injury, the goal he scored Thursday is hopefully a sign the Wild will have the same player it had down the stretch last season.
One that was on a 30-plus goal pace over the final month of the season and one that was perhaps its best player in the playoffs.

"I think it's always, whether it's preseason, regular season or practice, it's always rewarding to score," Parise said. "You're always hungry to score. It was a really nice play by Mikko [Koivu] and you want to get in those habits early of getting to the net and getting goals from around the crease. That's how we ended up getting our goal tonight."
Like the rest of the team, Parise admitted his line of him, Koivu and Nino Niederreiter got off to a slow start. Miro Heiskanen gave Dallas a 1-0 lead 5:31 into the game as the Wild struggled to generate much of anything in the first period.
But Minnesota picked up the pace in the second, outshooting the Stars 14-4 and getting rewarded when Koivu fed Parise with a puck through the slot that Parise redirected past Stars goaltender Colton Point.
From that point forward, Parise's line was outstanding, generating plenty of scoring chances, including several from in tight.
After Justin Dowling gave Dallas a 2-1 lead with just over four minutes left, Parise was the recipient of a Koivu pass in the slot and hammered a one-timer just high.
"I think we kind of expected being a little sloppy in the first period," Parise said. "But I think as the game went on, we started to get a few more touches in the offensive zone and I think it started to slow down a little bit for us and we had some good looks.
"Mikko gave me a really nice pass there in the slot at the end and I don't know if it hit a shaft and went up or what, but we had our chances to tie and we had chances to go ahead. We've gotta score more than one."

Perhaps most encouraging for Wild coach Bruce Boudreau was the effectiveness of the line despite it's heavy usage as the game wore on.
Koivu, Parise and Niederreiter finished second, third and fourth respectively in ice time.
"Parise] played good and I played him a lot on purpose because I wanted to see how he could handle it," Boudreau said. [He and Mikko] both played 22 minutes, which is an awful lot for a team that I coach, and they seemed to not run out of energy."
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