One night after meltdown, Wild impressively responds with comeback win of its own

"Funny sport, eh?" I said to Mike Yeo to begin his postgame media scrum.

"Funny trip," coach Mike Yeo retorted.

One night after it seemed like the Wild's world ended after blowing a 3-0 third-period lead in New York by giving up five goals in the last 20 minutes to the Rangers, all's right again in the Wild's world after it rallied from a 3-1 third-period deficit to beat the Boston Bruins, 4-3.

Suddenly, the Wild looks like a good team again, a team that has controlled – if not dominated at times – play for the majority of every game this season. It's 5-3, yet in those three losses, the Wild should have won in Anaheim, easily should have won in L.A. and should have skated out of the Garden with a simple win Monday night.

Sure, wouldas, couldas, shouldas. The Wild still lost. I get it. But at this stage in the season, even more so than results sometimes, it's about the way you're playing and the Wild loves how it's playing right now.

Fast, up-tempo hockey and tonight it rallied on one of the NHL's best defensive teams, a team that was 136-7-6 when ahead by two goals since the start of the 2010-11 season, despite it being the less fresh team on the second of a back-to-back, in a tough road building and without Jonas Brodin and Erik Haula.

Sure, Brodin and Haula aren't like playing without star defenseman Zdeno Chara, and the Wild did catch the Bruins without the behemoth. But pretty decent victory, nonetheless.

The man with fresh zippers on his face, who relentlessly worked all night (especially in the final minutes as the Wild desperately tried to keep Boston from tying it), won a puck battle in the corner, got the puck to Jared Spurgeon and drove the net as Spurgeon passed to Mikael Granlund.

Kinda like Jason Zucker's smart spinning goal against Tampa Bay last weekend, Granlund spun and threw the puck at the goalmouth, only this meant for a pass. And Parise scored a goalmouth beauty.

Parise said that between periods, the Wild made a smart tactical adjustment that "really caught them off guard" and it led directly to his goal.

I asked Parise to explain to laymen like me, and he said they noticed the Bruins kept going D to D all the time in their own zone retrievals. Usually, the Wild is a little more patient on the weak side, but during the second intermission, Yeo had the forwards all the time no matter what challenge the weak-side D. Look at the replay of Parise's goal, and he completely caught the defenseman off guard when he was in his face on the wall. Parise said the Bruins had a hard time breaking out the rest of the game because of that.

Yeo didn't want to get as specific about the adjustment as Parise did, but he said, "You can draw whatever you want up on the board, but it's only as good as the players executing it. The way they went out and executed, that was tremendous."

Matt Cooke deflected the shot of Justin Falk, only here because of Brodin's injury (see previous blog and Wednesday's paper). Then there was mad scramble for the puck. Ryan Carter, who has five assists in the past six games from the fourth line!!!, jammed at the puck and finally Fontaine tied it at the 6:34 mark.

Finally, with 5:53 left, Marco Scandella took Jason Zucker's pass and let her rip for the winner.

Yeo felt it was justice after Monday's blown lead and the fact that even when the Wild was down 3-1 tonight, he was happy with its game (Wild outshot the Bruins 42-28, and Niklas Backstrom won his first game since Jan. 9 with 25 saves).

"At 3-1 we didn't feel we were out of this game," Yeo said. "I was looking at the bench and I'm not disappointed the way our guys were playing. I felt like we were getting some chances, some pressure, and I knew there would be more opportunity if we could stay with it."

So, big win and a bunch of good learning lessons on the trip.

I'll have more on them in Thursday's paper (no practice Wednesday, so I'm holding a bunch of extras for a follow), but a lot of good learning lessons this trip for the Wild.

Its power play? Still 0 for 26 and tonight tied a team record (five times) by not scoring for an eighth consecutive game.

That's it for me. Pretty soon, my rewritten gamer will be on startribune.com/wild with some real good quotes from Parise, Yeo, Scandella, Vanek and Koivu are in there. So check that out. Also, check out the notebook on the injuries to Brodin and Haula and Parise's cut-up face.

No practice Wednesday, and I have a long travel day ahead of me (have to connect home to Minnesota), so barring news, other than Twitter, you may not hear from me til after Thursday's morning skate.