Minnesota Wild vs. Detroit Red Wings: Game Recap

Minnesota Davids 0 - 6 Detroit Goliaths

For the enemy perspective, please visit Winging It In Motown

Did anyone truly expect a Wild win against Detroit at home? You know, they of the 26-3-2 record at home (before the game)? I sure didn't.

I missed the first half of the first period, but the readership filled me in. Basically, the Wild were scored on early by Valtteri Filppula on a defensive blunder, the Wild got two penalties and were dominated, as expected. Shortly after I had arrived, I was treated to U.S.S Justin Falk capsizing in the defensive zone and leaving Tom Gilbert alone against three Red Wings, giving the Wings enough time to whack away at the puck until they beat Harding. It may be time for Falk to get scratched a give Steven Kampfer a try. Couldn't really hurt at this point. I'll actually defend Gilbert for this goal, no reasonable person would expect him to take care of three offensive players at a time. Anyhoo, it was a pretty uneventful period except for the goals and penalties. The play was mostly in the Wild's zone and whenever the Wild actually did get to the Red Wings' zone, they weren't able to build anything. No surprise, really.

The second period was... well...David vs. Goliath...with Goliath crushing David. Wild were oushot 12-5 in the period, despite having a powerplay in which they unsurprisingly didn't do much. The Wild looked like pawns in their own zone. No kidding, the Red Wings, especially with Henrik Zetterberg on the ice, were able to spend nearly 2-3 minutes at a time in the Wild zone. Darren Helm scored from the slot to make it 3-0, Filppula beat Harding on a slapshot after the Wild were in their zone for about half an hour to make it his second goal of the night and 4-0 and Ian White scored shortly after when his slapshot deflected off Nate Prosser's skate and took a wicked bounce off the ice. 5-0 after two period. Only Nick Palmieri and Matt Kassian were even, all the others were in the minus, ''led'' by Dany Heatley's -3. Here's a golden quote by Mike Russo on Twitter answering a question about bringing Matt Hackett out to replace Josh Harding:

child abuse is frowned upon

The third period starting with Harding still in net, but Yeo gave him a mercy pull after the Red Wings' 6th goal of the night off the stick of Zetterberg about 5:30 into the period. Matt Hackett was sent into the lion's den with a suit of meat...the suit of meat being the Wild's poor defense tonight. Once again though, he offered a very solid performance against a scary offense. He allowed no goals and made some dandy saves, including a diving paddle save on the penalty kill. He stopped 6 pucks in relief of Harding. The Wild thought they had scored an honor-saving, shutout-shattering goal towards the end, but Darroll Powe's goal was disallowed because he had the balls to be pushed onto Jimmy Howard by a Red Wings' defenseman. Really, refs? You couldn't just let that one go? Let alone it being a good goal in the first place, it had absolutely no meaning in the game whatsoever, except on Howard's stat sheet. Oh well. 6-0 was the final, Wild mustered 19 shots in the game, 9 of which came in the third period. Whoop-dee-doo.

:(

Is there anything left to say at this point? Another convincing loss, playoff hopes diminishing, no sign of things getting any better this season... Pretty disheartening, really. Sorry for the doom and gloom, but there's just nothing to be optimistic about this season. Next season should be better. Hopefully. That being said, all it takes is a good stretch to end the season, but something or someone needs to wake this broken team up and wake them up fast.

Fun facts: Everyone on the Wild's lineup got powerplay time tonight except Justin Falk...Well, Matt Kassian got 1 second of PP time, so I guess he didn't really have any. Also, Palmieri and Kassian finished the game leading the Wild in +/- with 0. Palmieri suffered a sharp drop in his ice time. Not quite sure why, seemed to play fine.

The Bennett's Chop & Railhouse Stars of the Game:

1. Valtteri Filppula (2G, 1A, +3)
2. Ian White (1G, 1A, +4)
3. Henrik Zetterberg (1G, 2A, +3)