Last night, I had the privilege of attending a Wild hockey game, where the Wild played the Atlanta Thrashers. The Thrashers managed to score one goal–and with only 22.3 seconds remaining the game, to ruin Manny Fernandez’s shut-out bid. He was positively amazing in the net last night, although, in all fairness, he didn’t have to be that stellar, since the Thrashers only had 15 shots on goal.
The Wild played a very solid game, for the most part–obviously. They were making some very nice passes. On the other hand, they played croquet last night. Seriously, I’ve never seen the puck go through the legs of so many players. In fact, at least once, and I believe twice, a Wild player missed the pass, and the puck when through his legs, but there was another Wild player behind him (not directly behind him, but close enough that the Thrashers couldn’t get to the puck first), and it went through his legs as well. Fortuantely, for the Wild, when things like this would happen, they’d be in the Thrashers end of the rink, so it would usually mean a re-grouping in their end before coming back. In the defensive zone, they played a little more solidly.
In total, the game was fun to watch. A Thrasher player (Eric “Just Call Me Michael” Boulton) tried to goad Wild player Derek “I like duplicating vowels” Boogaard into a fight, but Derek really had no interest in the ten minute penalty. With this little Thrasher trying to entice Derek, while at the same time backing away from Derek, the Refs had to call some sort of penalty, so both men ended up in the the penalty box. Not for “roughing” or “fighting” or anything like that, but rather for “Delay of game.” We laughed a lot over that. It might be my favorite penalty call ever. Some were likely shocked that Boogaard came out in the last two minutes of the game (apparently the coach gets fined $10,000 if there’s a fight in the final five minutes), but coach Jacque Lemaire said he trusted Boogaard to do his job–play hockey.
Minnesota native Mark Parrish made a bid for the hat trick, but, alas, could not come through with the third goal. Pierre-Marc Bouchard scored the final two goals, but also could not come up with the hat trick. This is slightly significant to me because the Wild have not played the Thrashers for a number of years (since 2003-2004). If you go based solely on Beth’s Wild record, you’d think the Wild and the Thrashers met somewhat regularly, since I’ve seen maybe ten or fifteen games in my life, and I’ve seen the Wild play the Thrashers twice. The first Wild game I ever attended (excuse me while I wax nostalgic briefly) was back on November 13, 2001, against the Thrashers. Marian Gaborik netted his first every hat trick, which cemented him in my heart as my favoritest hockey player. Sure, you might think it’s Mikko Koivu, but it’s not. Mikko’s the back-up to Gaborik; although to be fair, with Gaborik out so much this year, Mikko is really moving up the ranks quickly.
The Penalty Box really needs to be renamed the Kurtis Foster Box. Sure, two penalties doesn’t sound too bad, but when you consider the fact that the Wild as a team only had four, that’s suddenly looking not so good. I believe one of the other two penalties was what’s known as a good penalty–one that’s created directly to stop the other team from scoring (on a break-away or something like that). And I’m not sure Boogaard’s penalty really should count, because face it–he just stood there and let the other guy come at him (he did offer one brief shove, likely to get the other guy to throw the first punch, thus Boulton would’ve been given the instigation penalty. Boulton was smart enough to know better than to fight with Boogaard. Boogaard is not little). Foster’s second penalty, late in the game, was also what led to the single goal scored by the Thrashers.
And the Wild may possibly have broken their second leg in as many games–but, to look at the bright side, at least they didn’t break their own. Pronger of the Anaheim team had his ankle broken Sunday night, and last night the Thrasher’s Steve “You’re a Communist!” McCarthy left the game with a “lower body injury.” Hockey, sadly, must keep injuries a little bit secret–if you know an opposing player is coming off of an injury, you could use that to your advantage.
What? Oh, of course the Wild won. I was at the game. It’s not so much the the Wild win because I was at the game, but more that I told you that the Thrashers only scored one goal, and this years’ trend is that the Wild must score five goals when Beth is at the game. No more, no less. And not always in regulation, but always five goals. You’d think the Wild would start paying me to come to games.
(And former Gopher Ryan Potulny scored yet another game-winning goal for the Philedelphia Flyers, according to sources who know these sorts of things. Way to go, Ryan!)
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