You have to hand it to the Wild. It just keeps on winning and now enters a four-day break in its schedule with a nine-point lead in the playoff race thanks to Monday's 3-2 win over Calgary.
But as Mike Yeo pointed out afterward, we often talk about a "cushion," but a "cushion" really does mean squat.
Right now, the eighth-place team (Dallas, the Wild's opponent Saturday in the Big D) is on pace for 91.4 points. So it doesn't matter how many points the Wild's up on ninth. The Wild has 74 points. It needs to keep heading north until it passes that 92-point threshold and preferably more so it can make the playoffs for the second year in a row.
Good win tonight because the Wild really had to grind it out in a pretty sloppy, choppy game. Yeo said he expected it after two games on the road, an emotional win in Vancouver, the Wild's first home game in a month and the fact that chemistry would be messed with a bit with Mikko Koivu and Marco Scandella's return fiddling with the forward pairs and defense pairs.
"But our guys fought through it. That was a big win for our guys," Yeo said.
Kyle Brodziak "finally found a way to put one in," he said jokingly of his fifth goal of the season after Matt Cooke forechecked a frozen goalie, Reto Berra, into a turnover. Then, in the third, Jared Spurgeon and Zach Parise scored goals. Parise's would become the winner.
Darcy Kuemper made his 15th consecutive start and won his fifth in a row. His 11th win ties Josh Harding for the team's rookie record. He has given up six goals in his past five starts (three in three since the Olympic break) and is 11-2-2 since Jan. 7 with a 2.02 goals-against average and .930 save percentage.
Tonight, his parents saw him play live in the NHL for the second time (both against Calgary) and saw him win for the first time. The kid keeps on trucking, which has to make Chuck Fletcher feel much more comfortable heading into Wednesday's 2 p.m. trade deadline.