Well, Wild hung on for dear life last night and pulled it out 5-4 over Carolina. Three-way tie now in the Northwest Division for the top spot, although the Wild technically is still eighth because it’s played two more games than Calgary and one more than Vancouver.

Talked with Adam Hall after last night’s game, and he couldn’t get over the atmosphere in the arena last night. Talked to Ray Whitney after the game. He was understandably ticked off because he was called for a marginal penalty with 2:40 left. But he, too, couldn’t get over the crowd, saying, “This is such a fun building to play in.”

Pretty good reputation you all have built here.
Thoughts last night:

– Wild has a lot of work to do in the D-zone. It was truly amazing how Carolina had its way with Minnesota in the third period. Totally unobstructed cycles caused 30- to 40-second shifts deep in the Wild end.

– Marian Gaborik and Pavol Demitra are finding that chemistry. The two work so well together, although you have to take the good with the bad. They’re always thinking offense more than defense, which equates to high-quality scoring chances in the other end.

– Here’s your stat of the day, an amazing one I just unearthed. Petteri Nummelin was a plus-1. It was his second plus game since, get this, Oct. 25. His last one was Dec. 2. He did miss 14 games in there with an injury, but still…

Wild is off today because it doesn’t play again until Wednesday against the Canucks. See you in tomorrow’s paper.

Bonus: I know it seems this blog’s turned into a Boogaard promotion device, but hey, the guy’s a personality. I threw this in the paper today, but we have so many Sunday links today, it could get overlooked. Here’s a funny Boogaard story.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 11th, 2007 at 11:00 am and is filed under Main. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.