It has been two months since we did a Wild mailbag and several months since we did an ‘Ask Russo and Smith’ mailbag, but with Joe back on the clock, there’s no better time to answer many of your questions.

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

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.

Without Kirill Kaprizov, Jonas Brodin and Jared Spurgeon, Minnesota played a smart, poised and gutsy game, pulling away in the third for a 3-1 victory at Ball Arena.

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.

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

Yakov Trenin and Brock Faber scored goals 1:35 apart early in the third period, and the Minnesota Wild beat the Colorado Avalanche 3-1 in Denver on Monday.

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,

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.

Here are three takeaways from the Wild's 3-1 road win over Colorado. The Minnesota Wild (28-15-4) walked away with an impressive road win over the Colorado Avalanche (28-19-1) on Monday. If they would have lost, Minnesota would've dropped to a Wild Card spot.