I’ll be heading back to the Twin Cities in the morning. Remember, I’ll be on KSTP Tuesday night at 6 as opposed to the normal time slot of Wednesday.

I’ll probably be doing the show via telephone from the X, where I plan to take in the Schwan Cup and root on my Minnetonka Skippers, who knocked off top-ranked Hill-Murray tonight. Huge win.

If you didn’t see, here’s the sidebar I wrote for Tuesday’s paper on Doug Risebrough saying he doesn’t anticipate a shakeup.

First, I was five feet from Elisha Cuthbert after the game. Second, Wild played a strong game here tonight in Calgary, and it still wasn’t enough as Minnesota fell to 1-12-2 in its past 15 at my favorite arena in the West. The Wild has now lost six straight regulation road games since Nov. 29, one off the team record, and most disconcerting, is 0-8-1 in its past nine in the Western Conference.

If you didn’t know, the Wild plays in the West, meaning the Wild plays most its games against the West, meaning if the Wild doesn’t fix this glaring problem ASAP, the Star Tribune will not be digging into its travel budget for a Wild postseason. But I’ll be digging into my travel budget for a trip to, perhaps, Hawaii.

I found this to be a pretty entertaining hockey game tonight. Both teams skated well, went end to end, had chances. But the Wild is Fragile with a capital F, and since it’s virtually incapable of scoring, one error is enough to kill things, and that’s what happened tonight.

Stephane Veilleux scored his third goal in five games with 14 1/2 ticks left in the second to tie the score at 1-1. But with a chance to take the lead on a third-period power play after Adam Pardy married himself to Krys Kolanos all the way up the ice, the Wild instead surrendered its second shorthanded goal of the season and first since Nov. 1.

Dustin Boyd fired a bullet outside the zone that was meant to be a clear. But Brent Burns tried to knock it down with his stick. Instead, Burns deflected it just enough to turn into a perfect pass for Eric Nystrom. Nystrom skated in on a breakaway, faked a shot and beat Josh Harding for the shorthanded goal and winner midway through the third.

Harding, who I thought played great, fell on the knife after the game, saying close doesn’t cut it anymore and he didn’t make the big save when the Wild needed him to. Good for Harding for taking responsibility, but I thought he was a little hard on himself.

Again, the Wild was in that position because it just can’t score. Enough of the, “We just don’t get the bounces,” eh? I know Mikko Koivu hit the post. I know Antti Miettinen got robbed twice. But they just can’t score. Andrew Brunette couldn’t get the puck up on one chance. I mean, Benoit Pouliot gets a breakaway and the puck winds up behind him! That sums it all up.

If you score one goal again, one mishap like Burns’ loses games for you.

The Wild is thin — without Marian Gaborik, Owen Nolan, Marc-Andre Bergeron and now Kim Johnsson, who returned to the Cities this morning because of a serious family emergency. The Wild hopes he’ll be able to play Wednesday. He was missed tonight because the Wild dressed five defensemen, but essentially played four.

Erik Reitz played 8:36 and not a single shift in the third period.

The Wild tried to take the positives out of this game, saying if it plays with this same work ethic, it’ll win its share of games.

But you know what? That’s what it said after the game in Anaheim, too. It’s becoming trite.

The season’s entering the midway point, and the team is in danger of falling into an inescapable hole. If LA gets a point at home against Columbus tonight, the Wild will fall to 12th (the Kings are trailing 1-0 in the third).  

That’s it from here.  

By the way, asked if he expected Marian Gaborik to be back for Wednesday’s game against San Jose, Risebrough said, “It’s how he’s feeling. I’m not judging it as anything more than, ‘Lets call him at the end of each day and see where he’s at.’”

Gaborik has been held out the past two games because of a sore groin. He’s missed 29 games this season.

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Russo high above the Saddledome ice.

Again, Wild is going with five D tonight. An NHL player I was talking to today reminded me that Craig Weller started his pro career as a defenseman, but he’s on a regular forward line in warmups, so that doesn’t appear to be happening. In fact, humorously, in warmups, Derek Boogaard is playing defense paired with Erik Reitz.

The chances of that happening in the game in 0.000000000000000000000000001 percent.

Incidentally, the context of that Lemaire “who wouldn’t be concerned” quote today was me asking if this stretch of games could potentially derail the season, and he was like, “Ah, yah!”

The quote that’s bothered me all day was Risebrough telling me that a GM looks at teams game to game rather than “collectively.” My jaw dropped when he said that. Risebrough has said often in the past that you look at things as a whole, and most GM’s I know would look at their product, take a stretch of games and say, to quote Brian Rolston’s favorite phrase, “It is what it is.”

In other words, sooner or later, you just know if a team simply isn’t good enough. I know the Wild is without Gaborik, Bergeron and Nolan, but at some point you have to look at the product on the ice and say it’s not comparable to its opponents.

I’ll probably blab about this more in my Sunday column.

Now watch the Wild win tonight, and all will be well

I got a few emails from people wondering if Kim Johnsson was really traded or about to be traded. He really does have a family emergency, so we wish him all the best.

I will tell you this: Three scouts have already rushed to me, “What’s happened to Johnsson?”

For your displeasure, a friend sent me NHL records since Dec. 1. I didn’t fact-check it, but he’s a former sportswriter, so it must be correct

Records since Dec. 1

Boston 11-1-0 22
Chicago 10-0-1 21
Washington 10-3-0 20
Philly 8-3-2 18
Detroit 8-3-1 17
Devils 8-3-1 17
Phoenix 7-4-3 17
San Jose 7-1-3 17
Florida 7-2-2 16
Edmonton 7-3-1 15
Colorado 7-4-1 15
Calgary 6-2-3 15
Montreal 6-3-2 14
Buffalo 6-5-2 14
Nashville 6-5-1 13
Carolina 5-4-3 13
LA 5-6-3 13
Toronto 6-7-0 12
Pittsburgh 5-7-1 11
NYR 5-5-1 11
Tampa Bay 4-6-2 10
Atlanta 4-8-1 9
Columbus 4-6-1 9
Ottawa 4-7-1 9
St. Louis 4-9-1 9
WILD 3-8-1 7
NYI 1-10-2 3

This entry was posted on Monday, December 29th, 2008 at 7:50 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.