Blackhawks 4, Wild 1; Nolan misses game with leg injury

Don't tell me who won the U.S.-Canada game. I'm Tivoing it.

That's it. Next year the mothers are coming. The men just couldn't get it done.

I wrote a pretty crummy game story tonight. I think I was thrown for a loop when Guillaume Latendrese said the Wild should "proud of ourselves" because the Wild showed it could play with the Blackhawks.

True, when it was 1-0, Latendresse nearly scored after splitting the D. But he didn't and John Madden tied it after poor defensive-zone coverage. True, when it was 1-1, Huet denied Latendresse on a breakaway and Kyle Brodziak was stopped on a 3-on-1 and Brodziak couldn't pull a trigger on a Nick Schultz rebound. And then Hossa made it 2-1.

And yes, it was a 2-1 game going into that third until the Wild got into penalty trouble and Greg Zanon capped a trying night with a 200-foot delay of game penalty, which led to Patrick Kane's goal.

But, "proud?"

The Wild lost a fourth in a row tonight. Now, it is true the Wild was facing the best team it's faced all year in my opinion. The Blackhawks are rolling bigtime right now, have a ton of weapons, don't give up goals, score a bunch.

Just look at the weapons tonight compared to the Wild's weapons. The Hawks stars capitalized on their chances; the Wild flubbed it and shanked it and shot it into legs and misfired and put it into Cristobal Huet.

The Wild worked hard and got chances, and it ended up with 20 shots. There's just not enough finishers on the team.

And now, a team that was three points out of a playoff spot has put itself into a terrible position yet again. It's going to be 10 points out of a playoff spot by the end of the night. Every single thing it accomplished from the Nov. 20-Dec. 28 hot streak has evaporated.

And now, they're in the middle of a hellacious stretch that continue vs. Calgary on Wednesday, Chicago again, Pittsburgh and Vancouver.

Yikes!