Wild At Colorado, Foppa Sighting, Birthday Boy

Wild 4, Avalanche 3

Happy Birthday to the best next door neighbor I could ever ask for - Randy's The Man!  


The Return Of Jose
Boy, what an out of character start to a game by the Wild, huh?  Two goals within the first 1:01 of the first period.  REALLY evident that Colorado hadn't played since before the All Star break.  Good for us, not so much for them.  Kudos to Kyle and Andrew!   

Loved seeing Jose in net, getting some playing time against his old team.  He wasn't tested too much in the first period until the Wild took a really stupid penalty after being drawn into some roughing fisticuffs with the Avs.  Burns sure looked like he was jonesing for a brawl ;)  The Avs kind of took over at that point and ended up outshooting the Wild 12-5.  

Second period was all Avs for the first 9 minutes - they came out fast and hard, having shook off any remaining rust in the first intermission.  Getting to the halfway mark the shots on goal were even.  Barker actually made a really good defensive play and then tried taking on Yip in a fight.  Well, you really can't call that a fight, but they both took 5 for fighting.  I'm just so done with Cam - complete waste of defensive roster space.  Outstanding powerplay by MN, spending the first 69 seconds in the Avs zone putting heavy pressure on.  Avs not only killed off the PP they made a beautiful play to take the puck from the Wild and then drove in on a two on one and scored on Jose.  Wild 2, Avs 1.  Wild got 2nd powerplay with 5 minutes left and it expired like one second before Bruno gets his 14th goal of the season as the Wild go up 3 -1.  With two and a half minutes left the Avs take another penalty.  Wild don't capitalize on this PP, but Spurgeon fired a bazooka of a shot on goal - great to see him on the power play. 

Third period didn't get off to a good start for the Wild - Avs scored 45 seconds in.  Wild 3, Avs 2.  Avs continued to pressure, spent first 5 minutes completely overpowering MN in our zone.  Havlat took one of his infamous highsticking penalties, a 4 minute one at that.  MN defense worked thier asses off, minus Barker - who went missing from the bench, to kill it off.  Havlat better be buying dinner and drinks after that.  The Wild struggled just to stay on their skates through 10 and a half minutes - getting zero shots on goal.  Mikko took the puck to the blue line and dumped it in as he went to the bench.  Havlat gets a shot on goal, Avs deny but the rebound ended up on Bouchard's stick and in the net.  Wild 4, Avs 2 - whew, we needed that!  Three shots on goal with five and a half minutes left in the period.  Jose battled to keep the score static, even with the Avs pulling their goalie at 1:55 for the man advantage.  He got beat with 10 seconds left but held on for the win: Wild 4, Avs 3. 
Frickin' lucky, considering how poorly they played offensively - both stats sites showed three shots on goal in the third period.                

• Is it just me or does Todd Richards appear to have lost a whole lotta more hair since taking the head coach job?  I did like his tie, though.     
• Man, I just can't help but watching Spurgeon every shift out there, to the exclusion of what's happening elsewhere on the ice.
• Yip - seriously, with a name like that don't you just want to take his head off at every opportunity? 

The Return Of Foppa?
Peter Forsberg is practicing with the Avs to see if his ankle/foot is good enough to go in the NHL one more time.  How desperate are the Avs to put butts in seats if they're entertaining the thought of signing Floppa?  Sad.         

If this doesn't give you nightmares I don't know what will - Cam is just creepy looking:   



Oh, and for Rich - this should answer your question about the size of things and hitting home...