Big Night For Oiler Natives, Former Oiler Players, Schoolers of Khabibulin

WILD 4 - OILERS 1

SPURGE!!
What a great night for Jared; finally getting his first NHL goal, doing it in front of the Wild fans, doing it to his actual hometown team.  Spurge, my nickname for the little guy-which seems to have stuck according to the three texts I got from folks when he scored, is from Edmonton.  Very apropos and not at like what Bertuzzi did to us on Sunday, despite what Todd would have us believe.

Kyle Kicks Butt
Brodziak scored the winning goal, his 13th of the season, against his former team.  That's gotta feel good, huh?  

Class Is In Session
Pierre -Marc-Bouchard executed his spin-o-rama move to score the 4th goal, successfully making a fool out of Kabibulin's for the second time in his career.  The last time PMB laid that move on the Bulin Wall was when he was goaltending for Chicage and it was during a shootout. 

This wasn't the prettiest of games and there were an awful lot of stupid puck turnovers (Bouchard, Miettinen) and bad passes (Burns, Spurgeon) much like in the Detroit game, but our guys pulled together and figured out what they had to do.  Backstrom had at least three monster saves again tonight in addition to standing on his head, as usual.  And if he's going to give a goal up it might as well be from our good friend and forever honorable-Wild-team-member, Kurtis Foster.  This was a must win game, not only from a playoff berth standing, but as a means of recovery from the Detroit game on Sunday.  It took the guys until the third period to figure out how to play hockey but once they picked up on it they never looked back.

Chicks vs Guys
 It was the Dagget women plus myself in our upper level seats tonight while those Dagget guys sat in the lower level.  We girls had much more fun and had a better perspective on the game.  Here's how much of a hockey mom Paula is - she's busy talking defensive moves with Alex during the game, just like Dave does.  You can't tell me this game isn't in her blood just as much as her kids! 

Video Judge/Replay Booth Tour
Dave was kind enough to invite me along for a one-on-one tour of the video judge booth and replay booth after the game.  Dave refs with one of the judges and we got a nice tour of the press box, Fox Sports North Stage in addition to getting some great insight into how these guys do their jobs.  I'll share the pictures and how ga-ga we all were over the replay process in the next day or two.

Coach's Day!
The most important thing about tonight's game is that it was Coach Dave's birthday.  This guy is all about the hockey; coaching, reffing, hockey dad, fundraiser, shuttlebus driver, mentor.  And where does he spend his birthday?  At the arena with his family watching the Wild win.