Wild 4, Calgary Flames 1; Stoner out with groin injury

Well, that was more like it, eh? Sixty-minute effort. Rolling of four lines. Great play by all six defensemen, including Josh Scott, who replaced Clayton Stoner. He aggravated his groin injury. Great reads. Great backchecking. Just smothered the Flames, who wound up with no Jarome Iginla goals for the ninth straight meeting.

Wild snapped its four-game losing streak, while the Flames' five-game winning streak was snapped.

"We just didn't have a pushback tonight," said Flames coach Brent Sutter. "We never got back to the energy level and then our mental and physical part of our game, I didn't think that was there either. We weren't a good hockey team tonight."

The Wild was, getting two goals from Eric Belanger in his 600th career game, one goal and one assist from Kyle Brodziak, one goal from Cal Clutterbuck and a bigtime zinger aimed at Dion Phaneuf, two assists each from Nick Schultz and Marek Zidlicky and 25 saves from Niklas Backstrom.

On Phaneuf, recently snubbed from Team Canada, Clutterbuck said, "I asked him how his Olympic break was going to go. [Defenseman] Johnny Scott asked him first. It's not my joke. It's Jonny's. I double-used it on him."

Guillaume Latendresse had a real good game. Set up Brodziak's goal and had seven shots. Owen Nolan returned and assisted on Belanger's second goal and set the screen on his first goal.

Brodziak's goal was comical just for the fact that he's had great chance after great chance, and then he takes a half-bouncer from two feet and it gets in. Of course, as he joked, he then hits the post from point-blank minutes later. I'll write a Brodziak follow for Friday because the Wild's taking Thursday off.

-- Wild beat Calgary for a third straight meeting (dating to last season's final meeting) for the first time in history, with a 10-1 combined margin of victory. The Wild went 2-9-4 in the previous 15 meetings.

-- Belanger has eight points in his last eight games.

-- Brodziak's goal was his first in 29 games dating to Nov. 5.

-- Nick Schultz had his second career two-assist game and fourth career two-point game.

-- Niklas Backstrom won his 112th game, one from tying Manny Fernandez's all-time team mark. It was the first time in five starts Backstrom gave up fewer than three goals. Bad rebound on first goal, then real good.

-- Marek Zidlicky had his third two-assist game in the last six.

-- The Wild played its 700th game (314-275-111). I welled up.

-- The Wild won by three goals for the first time since a 5-2 win at Toronto on Nov. 10.

OK, no blog likely Thursday as the team is taking the day off. I'll write a follow. Then, I think Brian Stensaas is on Friday's practice and I'll be back with you for Saturday.

If you see the entire Wild braintrust at MSP tomorrow, slip a recorder in a few of their pockets for me. The gang is headed to Ft. Lauderdale for its pro meetings, which are the key meetings that will shape the near future of this franchise.