Wild vs Bruins GDT 11/25

from the ol wild front page

Quote :

Minnesota Twins catcher and American League MVP Joe Mauer will drop the puck for tonight’s ceremonial faceoff, and then he’ll shake the hand of Wild captain Mikko Koivu. Let’s hope a little bit of Twins magic rubs off on Koivu and the Wild, who are looking to imitate the cross-town baseball team in rebounding from a slow start to make an amazing late season push. If Mauer felt like sharing some of his offensive production with the guys in green tonight, that would be dynamite.

The Wild has been off since Friday night when they overcame a third period deficit to beat the New York Islanders, 3-2. Owen Nolan notched a pair of goals, including the game-winner with 1:07 remaining, and Koivu also scored. Eric Belanger tallied a pair of assists, and Niklas Backstrom stopped 27 of 29 shots.

The Bruins enter tonight’s game having picked up three straight wins, and at least one point in eight of their last nine games. On Monday, the Bruins won their third consecutive road game with a 4-3 decision over the St. Louis Blues. Patrice Bergeron assisted on all four Bruin goals, one of which was scored by former Minnesota Gopher, Blake Wheeler. Mark Recchi, Milan Lucic and Marco Sturm also scored goals in the victory.

Ticket Information

Limited tickets remain for tonight’s game, so click here to purchase.

Broadcast Information

Wild vs. Bruins will be broadcast locally on KSTC-TV Channel 45 at 7:00 PM. The game can be heard on 830 WCCO AM, or online at Wild.com.

Click here to receive Minnesota Wild broadcast alerts/game day previews each Wild Game day

If You’re Going

You’ll want to be in your seats before puck drop so you can let Mr. Mauer know just how spectacular his season was, and to make sure he signs a lifetime extension with the hometown ball club. Mauer’s good friend and another member of the MVP club, Justin Morneau, will be shouting out “Let’s Play Hockey” as well.

Meet The B’s

The Bruins were the sexy pick to represent the Eastern Conference Finals thanks to their back end, which is led by last year’s Vezina Trophy winning Tim Thomas, and behemoth defenseman, Zdeno Chara. Both Thomas and Chara were sluggish to start the season, and their problems mirrored a rough start for the Beantown hockey squad. Chara has since regained his form by posting seven points (1-6=7) in the last nine games. Thomas has also found his game, but the Bruins have benefitted from outstanding play by backup netminder, Tuukka Rask. Though their stats are similar, Rask has posted a 6-2-1 record compared to Thomas’ 5-6-3 mark. Rask has started the last four games for the B’s and earned at least a point in each.

Who’s Hot?

Koivu has started to run away with the Wild scoring lead. With his goal on Friday, Koivu ran his point streak to three games with a goal and three assists. In his last seven games, the captain has posted three goals and six assists.

Tonight’s Storyline

Since Friday, the Wild has made a total of four personnel moves. It started out innocently enough be sending Danny Irmen and Nathan Smith back to Houston of the AHL. Then, General Manager Chuck Fletcher claimed speedster Andrew Ebbett off the waiver wire. Two days later, he swung his second in-season trade by getting Guillaume Latendresse in exchange for Benoit Pouliot. Latendresse won’t make his Wild debut tonight as he waits for his visa issues to be resolved, but Ebbett will make his Wild debut tonight.

Keep An Eye On

When Latendresse does join the team, the Wild staff will have a difficult decision to make. One forward will have to sit, but Head Coach Todd Richards will have a tough time pulling Robbie Earl out of the lineup. The Houston call up has now been with the club for nearly two weeks and has been a boost of energy on every line he’s played on. Earl might be the fastest skater on the team (although Ebbett could challenge him), and he’s been able to maintain that speed for the duration of each game.

Probable Wild Line Combos

Ebbett has been practicing the last two days with Derek Boogaard and Chuck Kobasew on his wings:

Brunette-Koivu-Miettinen
Nolan-Belanger-Sheppard
Earl-Brodziak-Clutterbuck
Boogaard-Ebbett-Kobasew

Probable Defensive Pairings

With Brent Burns out due to a concussion, John Scott will be back on the blue line.

Zanon-Zidlicky
Schultz-Johnsson
Hnidy-Scott

Between The Pipes

Niklas Backstrom will try to get to the .500 mark with a win tonight.

View From The Press Box

The Wild have not called up anyone from Houston, meaning there won’t be a healthy scratch tonight.

The Infirmary

Kobasew (upper body) will return to the lineup tonight, and Martin Havlat (hamstring) appears close, but it won’t be tonight. Burns, Petr Sykora and Pierre-Marc Bouchard are all out for an undetermined amount of time with concussions.

Richards’ Quote of the Day

“There’s probably going to be a lot of emotions. He’ll be excited. He’ll be nervous. He’ll have something to prove. When you’re the new guy coming in, you want to show everyone what you can do.”

-- Todd Richards on what he expects from Andrew Ebbett in his Wild debut tonight

Honorary State of Hockey Residents

RW Wheeler won a Class A state championship with Breck High School and a WCHA title with the Gophers. D Mark Stuart is a native of Rochester, Minnesota.

Worthless Stat

The Wild owns an 8-1-0 all-time record against the Bruins. The only other team that Minnesota has had better success against is the Atlanta Thrashers (6-0-2).

Wild anticipate eating a shit ton of turkey and make this a fast win, 3-1.

The 3rd d-pairing is like a blast from the past, we got 2 pylons just like in the early years! I'd really like to see Stoner or Sifers actually get a shot as a d-man in this league, Hnidy is terrible and Scott is worse.
Any team that considers a Shep-Belanger-Nolan a 2nd line is in deep, deep trouble...

Yeah we are screwed the good news is tho we have both Scott and Booger to get their asses handed to them by Lucic.

Gotta say i think we may win just because we own boston but this is going to be ugly.

Wild will win. Bet on it.

when did Stinker hack Ceh's account and start posting?

00Xtremeninja wrote:

when did Stinker hack Ceh's account and start posting?

I honestly feel this one is in the bag for the WILD. It's a gut feeling or gas...one of the two.

00Xtremeninja wrote:

when did Stinker hack Ceh's account and start posting?

If Stinker comes here I'll go back to the other boards

lolwat wrote:

00Xtremeninja wrote:

when did Stinker hack Ceh's account and start posting?

If Stinker comes here I'll go back to the other boards

Ya mean I'M not enough to drive you away? Interesting!

would be interesting to see if he could navigate his way over here.

i wonder if i could implement a system where you have to type a coherent sentence before registering.

one hour till the puck drops. take a seat folks!

Mittens is out with flu-like symptoms now. Don Fuller may have to lace up the skates pretty soon. This is getting crazy.

Trying to stream this one...(blues game is on versus *shakes fist*)

But what is this sopcast thing I need to DL? atdhe users...?

Downloaded, installed, scanned. No problems here with it. Very good stream too.

That mini one on one kid wonder is pretty good! Draft him Wild!

Not a horrible first period...some sloppy puck handling but that's to be expected with this team...still pains me to see boogaard out on the ice.

Nothing Backs could do on the goal...if only we had a shooter on this team...

Shitty call! Please don't let this game be decided by that...

This loss hurts bad...

Dominate the entire game....a complete effort (maybe one of the best games we've played this year) and yet we fail to score because of a plethora of playmakers and a shortage of shooters. Damn I haven't been this disappointed after a game in awhile....we deserved it.

KobeCHOKE stopped B's win we at least get a point, Ebbett has 1 more goal then Shepp

Even though the shootout sucks....

The efforts by Zid and Kobe were just bad.

cehnehdeh wrote:

lolwat wrote:

00Xtremeninja wrote:

when did Stinker hack Ceh's account and start posting?

If Stinker comes here I'll go back to the other boards

Ya mean I'M not enough to drive you away? Interesting!

I'm a realist. I don't homer-rate players. I'm not surprised the Wild are one of the worst teams. Your jabs at the Wild don't bug me, I say similar things all the time. From what I saw of Stinker, his threads about guys like Pouliot were always made after people were pointing things out, so I question his understanding of the game of hockey. Like Coolbreaz, he disappears when things don't happen as he says, which like Coolbreaz is all the time.

Dee Oh Cee wrote:

This loss hurts bad...

Dominate the entire game....a complete effort (maybe one of the best games we've played this year) and yet we fail to score because of a plethora of playmakers and a shortage of shooters. Damn I haven't been this disappointed after a game in awhile....we deserved it.

I didn't feel it was that much the Wild playing good as the Bruins playing bad. They looked really tired out there. They took advantage of Ebbett's inabilty to win a face-off(he is worse than Sheppard at face-offs) for their goal, and the Wild couldn't put 2 past Rask.

Dee Oh Cee wrote:

Even though the shootout sucks....

The efforts by Zid and Kobe were just bad.

Meh, Zidlicky's wasn't that bad. He got in close and put a decent shot on net. Chucky's was way too far out for a soft wrister. Belanger's wasn't good either, I'd like him to try the old slapper.

I'd like someone to just try a move...anything...maybe have Zid try the move where he fakes the forehand then brings it back for the short side put in (hard to describe but he did it a few times last year I think).

Dee Oh Cee wrote:

I'd like someone to just try a move...anything...maybe have Zid try the move where he fakes the forehand then brings it back for the short side put in (hard to describe but he did it a few times last year I think).

We aren't a skilled team though. Not many guys on our team can skate and stickhandle at the same time!

lol!

sad but true.

Zits should just skate up the hash marks and rip a slapper, after he puts enough goalies into the ir list he'll just get free goals

Also given how many regulars we had benched, russo said it was 17mil and change we are not that terrible, we can still make the playoffs maybe even grief or beat a team if Backs pulls a golden goose out of his ass like Giguere did in 03.