Now that's what I paid the big bucks for tonight! Great all around effort from the ENTIRE team for ALL three periods! I say bag skate 'em every practice, coach. Especially considering we're going into Edmonton and Vancouver in the next 48 hours. No sitting on laurels boys, now is not the time to think your farts don't stink. The kind of game we witnessed tonight is what we all know these players have in them and how joyous it was to watch it play out before us. As Deanna texted: "the whole game is a highlight reel." She's not wrong.
I have to admit it was hard multi-tasking tonight: shooting pictures, watching the kind of Wild hockey that makes me giddy, razzing the Canucks fans next to us, and worrying about the drunk Wild homers behind us with their beer muscles all flexed up. I'll try to sum it up and if I miss something hopefully Bobbi will catch it.
- Bobblehead Night - Got Mikko gettin' jiggy wif' it - got an extra for Vicki so she didn't have to go to bed crying tonight.
- Double Anthem Night - nuff said, except to say that our singer screwed up O' Canada. Both Bobbi and I apologized to the Canuck fans sitting next to us. It's a Minnesota Nice thing I guess, we just felt really bad about it. They thanked us for singing it out loud. I think Bobbi gave them a pass on our anthem cuz it's really hard to sing.
- Vancouver Fans Galore - four of them sitting next to us, all the way from Winnipeg! That's some true fans and they wore their sweaters proudly for all three periods right down to the bitter end. Not like 3/4 of the Wild fans who left half way through the third period to 'avoid the traffic'. They were delightul to talk to and they took pretty much all the crap my fellow Minnesotans dished out with good grace and humor.
- Chasing Luongo from the net. Never. Gets. Old. Ever. Six goal routing of a gold medal olympian feels great, just great! At two goals Wild fans were prematurely chanting Sieve, Sieve, Sieve. At four goals I was leaning towards joining them but there was still a lot of hockey left and it was the second period - you know, the one where the Wild usually takes a steaming dump at center ice and then skates around pretending it's not there. When we went up 5-1 I gave in and chanted right along with the rest and offered my condolences to our Canadian seat mates.
- Unsportsmanlike Conduct - Canuck Rick Rypien went at with Stuabitz in the 2nd, right in front of and leaning into the Wild bench. Our guys took offense and a HUGE group hug ensued, including warm and fuzzies for the refs and linesman. Rypien was escorted to his bench to be given a 10 minute rest in the visitors locker room. Rick decided to get a little frisky with the ref at this point, not a smart move on his part. That's a big no-no in the NHL, somebody should probably read the rule book to him. I'm guessing Colin Campbell will do that, huh? Rypien is just out of control at this point. He's literally being drug down the ramp to the locker room by a number of his team mates when he looks up to see he's being cheered on by a Wild fan, presumably wishing him well for the evening...and all Hell breaks loose.
I'm guessing Gary Bettman will be reading the part of the rule book that talks about never-ever-ever-ever touching a fan to Rick on Wednesday morning.
Russo's Blog, Russo's Game Coverage, Russo's Collective Thoughts Article
• Oh Yeah, Back To The Game - Note to Coach Richards: leave GLat on the line with Havlat and Cullen. Don't ever change it. Or I will bag skate your sorry butt. One game does not a changed player make, but seriously - the way he and Havlat connected last season and now tonight's performance. Let my boy out of the doghouse, coach.
• Barker - didn't blow tonight. In fact, he and Schultz actually had some impressive moves out there. Not that I wouldn't trade them both in a nano second if the opportunity arose, but they didn't suck the life out of their shifts tonight so credit where it's due.
• Matt Cullen - Is. The. Man.
• Staubitz - Boogaard Who? Brad's plenty tough and he can actually skate, pass, shoot and keep up with his line mates on the ice - all at the same time.
• Backstrom - you're like a wandering dog who needs to be neutered in order to get him to STAY IN YOUR OWN YARD. It's ridiculous how far out you're wandering this season, like you'd really rather be anywhere but in our net. Knock It Off. I'll send Vicki after you and that's just not going to be pretty. You did have some very pretty saves tonight. I'm hoping I got a good shot of at least one of them to share with my friends here.
That's it for my recap - Bobbi will let me know if I missed something and we can post it up later in the day. Be sure to read Mr. Russo's coverage of the Rypien Ruckus as it plays out. In the meantime, I'm off to watch Friday The 13th - the original. None of the part 2, III or The Remake crap. Kevin Bacon and six degrees of separation - now that's spooky! Hockey and Horror - my life is good :)
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