The Avs, reeling with so many injuries but still a young, entertaining team with a lot of talent from Milan Hejduk, Paul Stastny, Matt Duchene, Erik Johnson, David Jones and so on, put forth a great effort here tonight before the Wild finally broke it open with three goals in the final half of the third period.

Then, Avalanche coach Joe Sacco, for zero reason, shamefully throws out pugilist David Koci and agitator Cody McLeod with 3 1/2 seconds left in a 5-2 game.

Well, what do you think happened?

First, McLeod two-handed Warren Peters so hard on the left leg immediately after the faceoff, Peters was shaking his leg back into his zone. Then McLeod goes into the corner and took a needless run at Marek Zidlicky, the Wild's very banged-up offensive defenseman who is playing with a significant injury and tonight was playing despite missing much of the second period with an obvious hand injury.

It was just a bush-league move by an Avs' coach who's spent the entire second half making ridiculous decision after ridiculous decision for a team that's 1-14-2 in their past 17.

Look, I get you're frustrated. The Avs played right with the Wild, if not much better, especially in the second period. And here you have your team that keeps losing suddenly find itself go from 2-2 to down 5-2 in a snap.

But the Avs have nothing to play for. The Wild has everything. Just a classless act by the Colorado coach.

Unfortunately, between working the Wild room and Todd Richards' press conference, I never got to question Sacco about his line decision. And the Denver Post didn't cover, so no writer questioned Sacco. But he should answer some questions on this, especially from the NHL. Update: Local scribe extraordinaire Jess Myers strung the game for the Denver Post and says he asked Sacco about the incident and he didn't answer the question.

If McLeod would have instigated the fight, Sacco would have deserved to be hit with the $10,000 fine for such idiocy.

The Wild bench was incensed, and it looked to me from way up here that Sacco and Wild assistant Dave Barr, who used to work for Colorado, got into a shouting match.

"I don't know why you do that," Wild forward Brad Staubitz. "Most coaches put their fourth line out with three seconds left," Eric Nystrom said, sarcastically. "That's what you call meat minutes." During the scrum in the corner, Avs goalie Peter Budaj, who a few minutes earlier drove Guillaume Latendresse's face into the ice, skated to center ice and seemingly lost his mind. He dropped his gear like he wanted to fight Wild goalie Niklas Backstrom. The ref got in his way, then Adam Foote came from the bench to stop him from skating further. "I wasn't even close to the scrum," Backstrom said. "I don't know what he was doing there. I saw him pushing the ref and going crazy to get at me. What was that?" Asked what he thought of Sacco's tactic, Richards said, "I'm not even going to comment on it." The whole silliness reminded of Dec. 23 when Koci tried to challenge 5-foot-8 Jared Spurgeon in Denver. After the game, Cal Clutterbuck said this: "That's a bigger joke than anything else. There's some guys over there, two guys in particular, I'm shocked they're still even playing in the league. If they're going to take a penalty, take a penalty. "We're on the road, we'll take a power play any day of the week. If they want to flaunt their egos, they want to show how tough they are, well, guess what, we're going to beat you, and we're coming for them in the standings." The Wild was eight points behind the Avs before that game and in 12th place. Wild's 17 up on Colorado now. Onward. Other than a crummy second period (I think I've mentioned those second periods before), the Wild played a decent first and great third. John Madden scored his 23rd career winning goal and fourth of the season, tying Marty Havlat. But Chuck Kobasew did all the work on the forecheck and Matt Cullen made a great pass to Madden for the tap-in. Jared Spurgeon scored a gorgeous goal 2:35 later to complete his first career multi-point game. Spurgeon's a bona fide NHLer now. Just great minutes every night for Minnesota. Kyle Brodziak, who was solid tonight as usual, and Havlat, who was tremendous, each had a goal and an assist and Andrew Brunette's power-play goal late in the second in spite of being sick as a dog lifted the lifeless group. The Wild tied L.A. with 77 points but remains in ninth. Yes, the Wild has more non-shootout wins, but the Kings have played one fewer game. Backstrom made 28 saves and he's usually money in his first start after being yanked. He is 15-2-4 all-time with a 1.95 GAA and a .930 SV% in the start after being pulled. He is 12-0-2 with a 1.75 GAA and a .939 SV% in the last 14 instances.
What else? --Brodziak's 2 points gave him 33 this year, setting a new career-high. He's got 10 points in his past nine home games. -- Havlat leads the team with 21 goals and 59 points. He has a five-game point streak and points in 9 of his last 10 games. -- Spurgeon's nine points have come in the last 18 games. -- Brunette snapped a 12-game goal drought and has 55 power-play goals with the Wild, four off Marian Gaborik's mark. -- Pierre-Marc Bouchard has 10 points in his last 10 games. --Brent Burns was an offensive threat all night. His assist gave him 42 points, one off his career-high and one off the team record for D he shares with Zidlicky. --Guillaume Latendresse returned after missing 58 games. He showed glimpses of the threat he should be. Three hits, two shots, plus-1, 10:21 of ice time. Read the notebook on www.startribune.com/wild for the details. The reworked notebook with some postgame reaction from him should be on the site soon. --The Wild's 7-2-2 in the past 11 home games and 11-3 in its past 14 at home vs. the Avs.

Wild has an extremely optional practice Wednesday. Kent will be there as I hit the road for a long, long trip that'll take me all over the map on many a commercial aircraft.

Huge four-game trip for the Wild -- to Nashville, to Dallas (hasn't won there since pre-lockout), to Vancouver, to San Jose.

Mikko Koivu will be on the trip and should return at some point on the trip. Richards didn't know yet after the game if Cal Clutterbuck or Clayton Stoner would be on the trip. He said before the game that Clutterbuck was a "definite possibility."

Not to state the obvious, but if the Wild just keeps winning, it's in good shape. They're tied with San Jose for the 3rd-most non-shootout wins (33) in the West, which is the first tiebreaker where there should almost assurely be ties at the end of the season.

Of course, Phoenix and Nashville played 3-point games tonight, and Nashville's game against Minnesota on Thursday begins a stretch of 12 of its final 15 games being at home. So these are all must-wins, to use an overused cliche.

But, hey, at least the final month will be a fun one, eh?