McDonald for Weight. Heck of a trade for St. Louis, and now Anaheim gets Scott Niedermayer back and should be able to re-sign Corey Perry. Last time Weight was traded to a team, Carolina won a Cup.

Talk about luck. Wild gets no Niedermayer, no McDonald and perhaps an emotionally-letdown opponent?

Postgame comments: Well, that was unexpected. As Brian Rolston quipped, “Was there a full moon? We scored five!”

Despite Wild players running to the bathroom like they were racing in a relay the last few days, the Wild gutted this one out by scoring a team-record four power-play goals in one period (the second).

As usual, the Wild followed Aaron Voros’ lead, who scored the lone goal in the first by schooling Joe DiPenta, who is a very bad skater.

Then J-S Giguere, who usually schools the Wild, gave up two more goals in the second to get the early gate.

Mark Parrish was used like a pinata in the second. He was first high-sticked by Chris Kunitz, and Eric Belanger and Marian Gaborik scored on each of the double minor. Then, Sean O’Donnell hacked Parrish in the face.

“Boy, that gets old quick,” Parrish said.

But on the 5-on-3, Rolston scored with a blast off the knob of Jonas Hiller’s stick and through Voros’ screen. Then, on the second minor, Voros fed Brent Burns for a pretty goal.

Josh Harding made 28 saves and won for the second time since Oct. 20. He was terrific and was vying for a shutout until the Wild’s already low energy finally seeped out in the final period.

Rolston had a goal and two assists. Kim Johnsson had two assists. Burns had two points and Voros had two points.

The Wild, which could have dropped to ninth with a loss, is now a point behind Vancouver against in the tight Northwest.

Talk to you tomorrow night from the Staples Center. No updates during the day tomorrow as few Wild players will be at the morning skate. 

Just to let you know, I won’t be blogging after tomorrow’s game as I’m praying I catch a red-eye out of town. It’ll be super tight. I will throw up the Q&A Extra at gametime for you to peruse.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 14th, 2007 at 7:25 pm and is filed under Game coverage. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.