With Yakov Trenin spending one-fourth of the opening period in solitary confinement, the Predators game operations folks waited until a second period media timeout to play a video showing

Zach L'Heureux was suspended 3 games for a slew-foot on the Wild's Jared Spurgeon on Dec. 31. The Predators winger had to answer for the hit on Saturday.

The Wild went 3-for-3 on fights in the opening six minutes of their matchup, taking out some frustration on Nashville. However, Minnesota may have burned off all of its energy exacting revenge. With the fighting out of the way, the Predators — third from last in the Western Conference — still had a game they could win.

The Nashville Predators beat the Minnesota Wild 6-2 on Saturday night in a game that featured three fights in the first 6:24.

The defenseman scored his first goal for Minnesota against Nashville and is sticking to his plan to “go day by day.”

Yakov Trenin fought L'Heureux while Marcus Foligno fought Luke Schenn two minutes into the game. Ryan Hartman joined in on the action, fighting Mark Jankowski a few minutes later. It was a busy penalty box at Bridgestone Arena Saturday night.

MacKinnon is the most likely Avalanche player to take advantage of a Wild defense that is bleeding shots. Not only is he the best shot-generator on the team, but the Wild have allowed the second-most shots to centers in the NHL over the past few weeks.

The Minnesota Wild have had bad luck with injuries recently. Joel Eriksson Ek, Kirill Kaprizov, and Jacob Middleton headline the list of players who have missed time for a team with contending aspirations.

It didn't take the Minnesota Wild long to avenge their injured captain on Saturday as they visited the Nashville Predators.

Matt Boldy's power-play goal 2 minutes, 28 seconds into the third period cut it back down to a two-goal game, but Forsberg scored his second of the night unassisted 16 minutes, 20 seconds into the frame, and Brady Skjei scored an empty-netter with 1 minute, 49 seconds remaining to put the finishing touches on a Predators victory.

Spurgeon (lower body) will not be on the Wild's upcoming two-game road trip, Michael Russo of The Athletic reports. Spurgeon has been out of action since Dec. 31 when he was hurt versus Nashville. He will miss Saturday's game in Nashville,

Welcome back to NHL Predictions. Each day, Last Word on Hockey takes a look at the games that are scheduled and offers insight and analysis to help predict who will be victorious in head-to-head matchups.