Game was decent, but there was no chemistry between the linemates, so there weren't any really organized attacks. I was literally sitting 15 feet from Patrik Elias, who was wearing a Pimp-O-Licious coat. The girls swarmed around him between periods. Lou was sitting right next to him. Patrik Sundstrom's son was sitting not too far away. And there were a couple other kids in suits with him who I figured must be prospects, but I couldn't figure out who they were.
It wasn't divided up into vets and regulars like usual, it was completely mixed up. There was a line of Bergfors - Gomez - Suglobov, But Gomez carried it, though Suglobov had a couple nice moves and shots. Bergfors got drilled into the boards a couple times. I was surprised at how well Foster played. Not as well as Parise or Suglobov, but he held his own and had some nice plays. Maybe he has an outside shot after all. Voros and Tallackson started slow, but ended up with some nice attacks and played a physical game. Vrana was mostly disappointing, but he had a couple really good shifts at the end. Khomutov just looked slow and Pihlman was invisible. Bergfors looked very fast.
Both Suglobov and Parise were bigger than I thought they would be, and there is absolutely no issue with Parise's size - he's bigger than Gomez.
I was dissapointed that Ahren Nittel didn't play, and very disappointed that Alexander Mogilny didn't play.
Edit: The biggest rule change is by far the allowance of the two line pass. Brian Rafalski, Paul Martin, and Vladamir Malakhov all had sweet passes almost to the opposite blue line. The touch up offsides is nice too, as the game flowed much better, and as has already been mentioned, Marty had NO problem with the puck handling rules, stopping the corner shots before they got to the line. F U rules committee!