Dean Evason gives “veteran guy” a piece of his mind.

The Minnesota Wild did not have a good night in their first game of the National Hockey League preseason, losing soundly to the St. Louis Blues by a score of 6 - 2. There was no doubt plenty of blame to go around for how the Wild performed last night, but Wild head coach Dean Evason seemed to have been particularly unhappy with the performance of one of his veteran players.

Speaking with the media on Sunday, Evason made it clear that he felt his young rookies in Marco Rossi and Matthew Boldy had played well in the lopsided loss. No doubt the expectations for both young men, neither of whom has yet to play at the NHL level in their careers, were considerably lower than what he would expect of an established NHL veteran and it is perhaps for that reason that Jordan Greenway found himself singled out.

In the same breath that Evason was expressing the fact that he was happy with how his rookies had played, he also expressed his displeasure with Greenway. Now to be clear Evason never singled out Greenway by name, but when he said Rossie and Boldy were good last night and added "but our veteran guy with them was not," there was no mistaking the identity of who he was speaking of.

In defense of Greenway it would seem that Evason was not particularly happy with the play from any of the regulars on the Minnesota Wild's NHL roster, but I suspect that Greenway was singled out due to how his play may have impacted the two rookies he was paired with on Saturday. The development of both Rossi and Boldy is of the utmost importance to the Wild moving forward, and a bad night from a veteran player expected to help mentor them certainly isn't going to help matters.

It is hard to argue with Evason's assessment of Saturday night's game. Although as I said earlier there will no doubt be plenty of blame to go around when the Wild review the game, Greenway was largely invisible during the night failing to even register a shot on goal during the entire game. No doubt the expectations from Evason will be even higher heading into the Wild's second game of the preason.