2009-10 Game Eighty-One: Wild 2, Flames 1 (SO)

At the start of the season, it would have been hard to anticipate the outcome of the Minnesota Wild's penultimate game for the 2009-10 season. The way that the Calgary Flames lit up the competition in their first ten games, very few people expected that they would skate into game 81 having been eliminated from playoff contention. After seasons of futility against their division rivals, nobody could have anticipated that the Minnesota Wild would be looking for their fifth win in the season series, having only dropped one game at home. Even looking at recent history, with the seemingly crippling number of injuries and the amount of untested players being asked to contribute, it seemed unreal to believe that the Wild could topple the Flames.

Topple them they did, though. In a hard-fought, physical game, filled with penalties for both sides, the Wild and their young guns came out the victors. A scary moment came in the third period, with the score tied at 1 and the Wild on the penalty kill, as Niklas Backstrom took a puck to his throat and had to leave the game, but Minnesota responded by continuing to shut down the Flames fizzling offense, and, in the shootout, the only player who didn't use Mikko Koivu's signature move was Koivu himself, as both Brent Burns and Antti Miettinen tallied goals to give the Wild the win.

Game pluses:
- Youth movement. A lot of credit has to go to the way that Cody Almond, Casey Wellman, Robbie Earl, and Nate Prosser played. None of these players were with the Wild to start the season. With the exception of Earl, none were with them at the trade deadline. And yet those four are showing a lot of potential, and they could all make big splashes on the NHL stage next season.
- Penalty killers. The Wild found themselves shorthanded often enough that they may have thought a new rule was inserted that only gave them four skaters on the ice. And yet the penalty kill came up huge, especially with players like Greg Zanon sacrificing themselves to stop the puck.
- Niklas Backstrom. Backstrom has had a shaky season, and had to struggle through injuries. Against Calgary, though, he was brilliant, with the only Flames goal coming thanks to one bad rebound.

Game minuses:
- Power play. The Wild got their regulation goal on the only power play that looked like it had an idea of what to do. The rest of the time, Minnesota couldn't get set up in the offensive zone, and couldn't move the puck well.
- Communication. Passes went to the wrong places, and more than once, it looked like Wild players didn't know where their teammates were.
- Injuries. The Wild came into the game having lost 333 man-games to injury, and were missing another six players before the puck dropped. Over the course of the game, another two players went down, and at least one is guaranteed to not play in the season finale. The Wild definitely have to look at how their guys are training, to help keep them from injury. By the same token, the NHL needs to look more seriously at how some players are getting injured, and how some penalties are doled out. This is a league-wide problem, and, while the first step has been taken, at least with regards to head-shots, sometimes it's the boarding and other assorted penalties that carry larger impacts.

Next up: The Wild finish the season against the team that used to call Minnesota home, and they get to do it in front of their hometown fans. The Dallas Stars come calling on Saturday as the 2009-10 season wraps up.