Chris Simon is indeed in for Mark Parrish, scratched for the second time in seven games.

So this will be the first game with Boogaard, Fedoruk and Simon in the same lineup.

Ryan Kesler is in for Vancouver.

Wild first-round pick Colton Gillies, a local boy, is sitting in the stands. He’s currently negotiating with the Wild, I am told.

How bout this? In the stands, I see a Nummelin, Radivojevic and a Daigle jersey.

The Sedin twins and Markus Naslund are starting on three separate lines.

Juno Director Jason Reitman is being interviewed. He’s wearing a Bertuzzi jersey, just said he only comes to games to “see Taylor Pyatt’s dreamy eyes” and noted that Juno takes place in Minnesota but was filmed in Vancouver, meaning, Reitman said, “To make Minnesota look good, we had to come to Vancouver to shoot it!”

POSTGAME NOTES: No other way to say it. Just a huge, huge victory.

Wild strengthened its hold on the Northwest Division lead tonight, inching three points ahead of Vancouver and Calgary heading into tomorrow’s (Saturday’s) game at the Flames.

It’s now nine up on ninth-place Nashville.

A loss tonight would have meant Vancouver skated out with the division lead by a point. Thus, the proverbial four-point game.

Unfortunately, this is one of those games where you have to call in quotes to a running game story, so no way to pretty it up for paper.

But Branko Radivojevic scored the winning goal — giving the Wild a 2-0 lead at the time early in the third — off a pretty 2-on-1 with Pavol Demitra. Demitra made something out of nothing in the neutral zone. I’ll follow it up in Sunday’s paper, but coach Jacques Lemaire told a funny story about the goal.

There was almost a chance Demitra wasn’t on the ice. Radivojevic and Stephane Veilleux were solid again. Veilleux had five hits.

Nik Backstrom was sensational with 30 saves. He had to be good tonight because the Canucks did play well.
But one has to wonder if the presence of Boogaard, Fedoruk and Simon alone made a huge difference.
I mean, Ryan Kesler and Alex Burrows didn’t pull their normal stuff tonight. And that could be because Boogaard, on two of his five shifts, absolutely crushed Mike Weaver, Brendan Morrison and Kevin Bieksa. In other words, heed notice. The Wild outhit Vancouver 24-15. /p>

And I’ve got to tell you, Benoit Pouliot was outstanding. This guy has a ton of talent folks, and he showed it off because Lemaire showed him confidence with important minutes.

Of course, once again, nothing’s ever easy. I don’t remember the last Wild game that was decided either way early in the third period.

Wild suddenly has a point in seven straight (3-0-4). That’s it for now. Talk to you from Calgary.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 21st, 2008 at 8:38 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.