Minnesota Wild vs Calgary Flames: Wrap up for the Winners

After a rough start, the Minnesota Wild beat the Calgary Flames 5-1, with Josh Harding letting in only 12 goals in the last 12 games and stopping 24of 25 shots tonight. Unreal play for him.

The end of the game devolved into chaos on ice though, which lead to some scary moments and an injury for Keith Ballard. The refs called weird penalties (Nino Niederreiter's slashing penalty is one that almost never gets called in the NHL), and let other penalties go uncalled.

Mikko Koivu, Zach Parise, Justin Fontaine and Zenon Konopka all scored goals, with Parise netting 2 goals. The Wild have now scored 13 goals in the last 3 games.

Koivu had his first multi-point game of the season, and Konopka scored his first goal as a Minnesota Wild player.

Fontaine and Konopka's goals came apart 33 seconds apart. This was Fontaine's 5^th goal of the season. Not too bad for a kid that many people thought wouldn't ever crack the line-up.

Matt Cooke finally lost his temper and ended up in the box after a large scrum stopped play. Shortly after that Pominville got called for interference, and the Wild had to fight off a 3 on 4 and 4 on 5 .

The bad parts of this game seems to be the same old story. The Wild completely play down to their opponents level. When they finally decide to start playing their own game, the 3^rd period happens.

While it's great that the team is winning, it's frustrating as a fan to watch a team with so much talent just not put in the effort 100% of the time. At this point, it's almost like they put in an effort 70% of the time.

Sure, I'll take the wins, but it would be nice if they could play strongly most of the time, and not make us sweat out which version of the Wild we will see.

1. Dany Heatley looked much improved on the fourth line and even scored a PP goal, can the heater keep the heat on? Heater actually made a ton of good plays tonight, and even negated an icing call!!
2. Charlie Coyle is returning, again.  Can the kid spark the top line tonight? The first line was on fire tonight, and both Parise and Koivu claimed a lot of that came from Coyle's return
3. After starting the season on fire, Matt Cooke has cooled off as of late, are the Calgary Flames just what he needs to get back on the score sheet? No goals tonight. Flames spent a lot of time trying to get into his head tonight.
4. Can the Wild secure their third 3-game winning streak tonight? Wild have won 6 of the last 7, so they are doing pretty well
5. Final Score? 5-1!