Wild down to 11th in the West after, predictably, the eighth- and ninth-place teams in the conference played to a shootout (Anaheim won to keep the Wild two points out) and St. Louis won to overtake the Wild for 10th.

The Wild just didn’t create a whole lot tonight (outshot 30-19), but in the end, if Marian Gaborik buries the partial breakaway or Dan Fritsche doesn’t redirect the puck wide on the 2-on-1 or Owen Nolan, after skating around Paul Mara, beats Henrik Lundqvist or Eric Belanger buries the 3-on-2 or Cal Clutterbuck can score on that late scramble, it’s a tie game.

But there’s no what-if’s anymore, not when the season’s quickly evaporating and the Wild lacks such go-to guys right now with the injuries to Mikko Koivu and Brent Burns. The Wild has missed the spark Burns provides for some time. But tonight, you really saw how much Koivu’s absence kills. Not just the 22 minutes a night he plays — “and not just 22 minutes of skating around,” said James Sheppard — but the big minutes. Any big faceoff tonight, the Wild didn’t have a prayer, losing 64 percent of their draws in the game and 29 of 40 through two periods.

That’s not just a stat, folks. It’s an oh-so important stat because it usually indicates puck possession, and the Rangers are a puck-control team that forechecks the heck out of it when they have the puck. And tonight, they usually had the puck.

Marian Gaborik looked real good. He scored his first goal since Dec. 23 and had five shots and four hits. In fact, the Rangers nearly lost their mind when Gaborik clocked Markus Naslund in the second. Also a couple big scraps between Cal Clutterbuck and Sean Avery, and Owen Nolan and Colton Orr.

But in the end, the Wild was a goal short. It’s just a punchless team right now minus some very big players. It’ll be very difficult — or impossible — to overcome.

Penalties really hurt tonight, especially Antti Miettinen’s offensive-zone interference penalty to negate Colton Orr’s first-period rough. That led to Nikolai Zherdev’s sweet goal with 4.4 seconds left in the period. My favorite was Marek Zidlicky getting away with a blatant two-handed slash aimed at Nik Antropov’s stick, then reacting to getting away with it by sawing Antropov’s stick in half. Kind of like when Zidlicky got away with the cross-check in St. Louis and reacted by shooting the puck in the stands, leading to 2 5-on-3 goals. Or when Zidlicky …

Scary moment tonight in the first period when Kurtis Foster’s left leg — the repaired one — gave out from under him going in the corner. Referee Chris Rooney then skated over him, and Rooney’s skate accidentally hit Foster in the head. But Foster was OK and stayed in the game.

Talk to you tomorrow morning.

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With Mikko Koivu’s potentially season-ending right knee injury, former San Jose Sharks captain Owen Nolan will don the ‘C’ until/if Koivu returns. He’s wearing it for the first in his Wild career tonight against the Rangers.

Craig Weller and John Scott out.

Kurtis Foster in, along with Peter Olvecky — a scratch last game.

Aaron Voros out for the Rangers.

Opening lines in first game without Koivu:

Nolan-Sheppard-Bouchard

Brunette-Belanger-Gaborik

Veilleux-Fritsche-Clutterbuck

Gillies-Olvecky-Miettinen

I’ll be on Rangers’ radio during the second intermission.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 24th, 2009 at 4:52 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.