First, I know you don’t care, but one reason you’ll see a game story in the final editions and on the web site, is because of Frank Brown, the NHL’s vice president of communications, who was in town accompanying Gary Bettman tonight.

After I scrambled to re-write my gamer in the last second and file two minutes after Keith Carney’s overtime winner, I run to the elevator and it’s completely full.

Brown, being the veteran he is — he’s the former hockey writer at the NY Daily News — got out to let me squeeze in. Many, many thanks.

What a euphoric locker room, but still, what impressed me was the level-headedness. Just like Wednesday’s atmosphere was not-too low, tonight was not-too high, which is a good sign if you’re a Wild supporter.

This was an unbelievable finish. I hope to someday actually get to watch it.

If you think about, there were three goals in a 3:05 span, concluding with Carney’s OT winner — his third playoff goal in 87 career games and first since April 24, 1999.

I’ll let you read the gamer, but Brent Burns gave me a couple great anecdotes.

The goal was unassisted, but Mikko Koivu and Pierre-Marc Bouchard, who teamed on the late regulation goal, set it up in reality. And maybe Avs defenseman Ruslan Salei also could have gotten both assists.

Thanks to the off-ice officials above me who loaded up the TiVo well after the game, I got to see the goal from its inception. Koivu was skating in the corner with Joe Sakic all over him. He backhanded the puck to Bouchard off the cycle, and Bouchard tried to throw it into the crease for Brian Rolston.

Salei quickly tried to clear, but he banged it off the half wall and Carney one-timed it off Salei’s skate.

As Rolston joked, “It went through my aura.”

Talk about a rollercoaster of emotions, but the Wild, which had 23 shots blocked, think its scores the winner with 1:51 left in the third on Koivu’s shot from just inside the blue line.

Then Kim Johnsson’s called for a questionable hooking penalty and Milan Hejduk scores on the redirection with 43.8 ticks left to tie it.

But the Wild’s veterans said some bigtime words of composure during the intermission, and the Wild gets a lucky winner — fittingly off of one final blocked shot.

Other notes:

– Branko Radivojevic, who gutted out the entire game on a painful right leg, declined to talk after. But man, pretty impressive performance for a guy that looks to be bigtime injured.

– Wild outhit Colorado 24-12, with the biggest crowd-pleaser being Pavol Demitra, who scored a power-play goal for his 20th career playoff goal, pounding Peter Forsberg.

– And how great was Martin Skoula???

– The Wild improved to 2-9 in its last 11 playoff games dating to 2003 and is now 4-8 at home in the playoffs, and 3-4 in playoff overtimes.

– Forsberg scored his 64th career playoff goal in 146 games.

– The Wild has allowed the first goal in six straight playoff games.

– Very, very few Wild players will be practicing Saturday with two days off between games, but I’ll hop on the blog at some point prior to my flight to Denver to say hi between preparing hopefully quality stuff for your Sunday paper.

The Wild will fly to Denver Saturday afternoon and practice there Sunday at noon MT.

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 12th, 2008 at 12:16 am 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.