Here’s the Wild notebook . It wasn’t on the Wild page until now.

FYI, if the season ended today, the Wild would host the Dallas South Stars in the first round.

Benoit Pouliot was scratched, and quite frankly, it slipped my mind after, so Kent will ask why Thursday. The Wild isn’t skating Thursday, but it is having an off-ice workout.

Big bounceback victory tonight as the Wild regained the NW Division lead by a point, although idle Calgary has a game in hand.

Edmonton is in trouble. It’s only three points behind Vancouver, who got killed tonight, but the Oilers only have four games left and the Canucks have five. 

Since the Strib has been running that optimist/pessimist chart everyday, we’ll stick with that theme.

The pessimist would say the Wild got lucky, or as Oilers coach Craig MacTavish said, “We didn’t have any puck luck.”

And he’s right. The Oilers hit five posts and always seemed to be a second too late at pouncing on loose pucks when Niklas Backstrom was down.

But the optimist would say the Wild was exceptional in the neutral zone limiting Edmonton’s speed and cutting down the odd-man rushes that killed them Monday in Edmonton.

The only odd-man rush I remember is that time 40 seconds into the second when Mikko Koivu lost Jarret Stoll for a breakaway. But Stoll seemed to lose the puck and it went wide. Of course, there was that one time Nick Schultz lost the puck in his own zone as he tried to cross to Kim Johnsson, but Sam Gagner clanked the pipe.

That was the most dangerous of the posts/crossbars, considering the time and score.

Branko Radivojevic continued his tremendous play lately. Jacques Lemaire must be rubbing off on me, but who cares about Radivojevic’s big goal and assist? This dude was outstanding defensively and was the man on the 6-for-6 PK.

“Radio” did have his first multiple-point game in more than a year and scored his third goal in six games after going 35 in a row without one.

Koivu had his third career three-assist game and fifth-career three-point game, and won 7 of 8 draws in the third period after winning just 2 of 9 in the first two periods.

Sean Hill, after breaking a 90-game goal drought Monday in Edmonton, scored for the second game in a row, and his second-period goal acted as the winner. People do forget that Hill was once a marksman in this league.

Hill’s the first player to go 90 plus without a goal, then have a goal in two straight since Derian Hatcher, 125 games without (12/6/05-3/13/07). Source: Elias Sports Bureau.

Brian Rolston was outstanding and scored his 33rd career shortie. Wild was tied for last in the NHL with two shorties before Rolston’s. Team’s first since Jan. 3.

Rolston, who’s been one of the Wild’s best forwards the past month, is now one goal short of his third-straight 30-goal campaign. For all the Rolston bashers out there, consider this: Where would the Wild be without his offense, and where will it be if it doesn’t re-sign him?

Wild is 43-7-6 the past two seasons when he scores a goal.

This was the Wild’s first three-game home winning streak since Nov. 28-Dec. 2, which is pretty amazing for a team that was so exceptional at home last season.

Niklas Backstrom tied Manny Fernandez’s team record with his 30th win. He’s amazingly 9-0 against Edmonton. Why’s that amazing? He’s been yanked in his last three starts in Edmonton.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 26th, 2008 at 6:31 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.