Shutting out the Canucks

Wild goalie Anton Khudobin.

Sometimes in sports, you just have a team's number. That seems to be what's happening with the Wild whenever the Vancouver Canucks come to St. Paul for a division-rivalry game.

With a 4-0 win for Minnesota on Sunday night, it marked the fourth straight game at the Xcel Energy Center that it's won against the Canucks.

Vancouver has such a hard time playing here that it didn't start its dominating goaltender Roberto Luongo (whose statistics at the X are less than desirable), but instead started Cory Schneider. The goalie switch-a-roo didn't seem to phase the Wild one bit.

The shutout win snapped a three-game losing streak (preceded by a four-game win streak) for the Wild. It was a great effort against a team with the best record in the NHL, a team which had only lost one game in regulation since early December before the loss to the Wild.

Wild came to play
Right from the start, there wasn't much to complain about. I could tell early on that Wild rookie goalie Anton Khudobin was on his 'A' game. He made some great saves all night, with some help from his defenders, to earn his first career NHL shutout in only his third career start. Amazing job for the call-up filling in for the injured Niklas Backstrom and Jose Theodore.

No goals were scored in the first period, but that didn't stop the fans from giving the Wild a warm reception as they went to the locker room. It's much better than booing them into an intermission, that's for sure. The Wild held a 8-0 shot advantage until almost the halfway mark of the period.

The Wild got on the board a few minutes into the second, with a diving-effort, power-play goal by Andrew Brunette. It would turn out to be the scrappiest goal of the night. Martin Havlat continued showing his offensive skill with a pretty breakaway goal about halfway through the second.

Makin' the highlight reel

In the middle of killing a penalty, Minnesota native Matt Cullen grabbed a bouncing puck that had trickled out to center and away from a Vancouver defender. Cullen turned on the jets and created a beautiful breakaway for a shorthanded goal.

It's pretty rare that you can see two breakaways in a game, let alone having both of the shots hit the inside of the cage.

Cullen's goal early in the third seemed to end any chance the Canucks may have had to come back. John Madden also had a highlight-reel goal later with great assists to Cullen and Chuck Kobasew.

As for the shutout, anytime you can keep the dangerous Sedin twins off the score sheet, it's a good day.

Physical game? Check.
I was hoping for some hitting and fighting during the game, being that it was Vancouver and all. I got my wish. The Boogeyman-replacement Brad Staubitz dropped the gloves with Aaron Volpatti in the first after Staubitz hit Andrew Alberts so hard that he went sailing on the ice into his team bench.

In the second, it was Kobasew getting into the action with a scrum against Keith Ballard. Both fights were worth it, many punches were thrown. Ballard and Kobasew even had to be separated by the referees because they went on so long on the ice that they were tired out. No take down there.

Hitting, and often times fighting, are a part of the game. It was great to see these parts showing up on Sunday.

Me and my friend Michael.

Thanks goes out to my friend Michael for inviting me to the game; we had some great seats. That's him in the above photo, wearing a Wild jersey for the first time ever. It was his first piece of hockey apparel. I was a proud sports friend.

What's next?
The Wild now hit the road for a few games. We'll see if the effort put forth against the league's best team can hold up for a little while.

If you're watching the points in the standings (which I don't like to do since it changes so much, so frequently), eight teams are currently ahead of the Wild in the Western Conference. Minnesota is tied with San Jose and Los Angeles with 49 points each. But that's at the moment.