This was, as one observer so aptly put it, big-boy hockey. The Wild and Edmonton were at Xcel Energy Center Thursday, playing for the sixth and last time this season. There were skirmishes, there were sticks to the face. There were hits made, punches thrown. And -- finally, for the Wild -- there were goals scored.
The streak is over.
An eight-game winless streak in which the Wild scored just 10 goals evaporated in front of a crazy Xcel crowd in a 4-3 Wild victory that featured goals from four players, countless hits and two fights between Wild winger Matt Kassian and Darcy Hordichuk -- Kassian dominated. The game began on a high note and climbed right to the end, when -- after the Wild fought off an Oilers' power play over the final 83 seconds -- goalie Niklas Backstrom got into it with winger Ryan Smyth.
"He slashed me four times before that," Backstrom deadpanned. "So I had a lot of things to catch up [for]."
It was that kind of game, played in front of a sellout crowd that never stopped yelling.
"It was fun, wasn't it?" Wild coach Mike Yeo asked. "That was ice hockey. Both teams are probably happy to be done with each other."
Probably so. There were seven roughing penalties called. Two misconducts. Four fighting majors. Oh, and there was some nice hockey, too.
The score was tied 1-1 when the Wild got mirror-image goals 19 seconds apart to take a 3-1 lead. Kyle Brodziak got the first one started when he took the puck from neutral ice to Jarod Palmer, who broke in on a 2-on-1 rush with Cal Clutterbuck. The Oilers' defenseman went to Clutterbuck so Palmer calmly beat Nikolai Khabibulin high glove-side for his first NHL goal. Just 19 seconds later, the puck bounced over the sticks of at least two Oilers to Pierre-Marc Bouchard who broke in and scored in the same place.
