By Brian Stensaas
Theme of the night, right here: Derek Boogaard spent 1:08 Friday night actually on the ice. But he was off the Wild bench for 3:08. How? He spent two minutes in the penalty box for a dumb slashing penalty early in the first period.
He wasn't alone.
All told, the Wild took eight penalties tonight in its loss to the Thrashers - the first EVER in regulation against Atlanta (Wild had been 6-0-2). Eight penalties is a lot. But tonight, it wasn't even so much the penalties - it was the timing of them.
After Eric Boulton's high, high stick on Big John Scott drew blood, the Wild was handed a four-minute power play on a silver platter. It proceeded to dump it all over the floor.
Marek Zidlicky and Shane Hnidy took back-to-back minors, giving Atlanta the 4-on-3 man advantage. It cashed in when Nik Antropov tipped one in with just 13.9 ticks left on the first-period clock.
It remained a 2-2 game until Niclas Bergfors' nasty wrist shot fooled Nik Backstrom and found the right top shelf of the net.
Evander Kane - yes, he's named after the boxer - had a pretty first period goal (his 13th of the year; he's 18 1/2 years old, by the way) but took an interference penalty with 2:00 left in the game to give Minnesota some needed momentum. However - SURPRISE! - Martin Havlat took a cross checking penalty just 24 seconds later and Atlanta was able to pretty much run out the game.
