Wild grinds out quality road win in Calgary; Schultz injured

Evening from the business center at my hotel. My laptop is on the fritz, but Wild PR guy Aaron Sickman and Wild TV color analyst Mike Greenlay came to my rescue; Sickman with his laptop, Greenlay with his charger.

So those two are to thank for a game story in the Star Tribune in Sunday's editions.

Now I'm in the business center for a quick blog after midnight even with a 5 a.m. wakeup call on the horizon.

That's how dedicated I am to you.

Quality road performance for the Wild tonight. They played a simple game, got pucks behind the Flames' defense and forechecked. They at least made Calgary play defense, survived a couple momentum shifts in the second and wound up breaking through with two goals in the last 4:35 of the second for an eventual 3-1 win.

Here's the gamer

Here's the notebook

Mikko Koivu set up the first -- a goalmouth pass for Antti Miettinen -- and scoring the eventual winner when he outmuscled Anton Babchuk to get his stick on a Brent Burns slapper into the slot.

Then, after a bunch of pretty passes, Koivu to Chuck Kobasew in the third.

Koivu was ultra-motivated, and after a ton of digging around today, I did confirm that this came after a one-on-one meeting yesterday at the X before the Wild's flight between Richards and Kaaptain Koivu. Clearly, the message: He's got to be the one to lead.

Richards, sick as a dog all day today, basically acknowledged that in his postgame tonight. I'll write about it in Monday's paper.

Nik Backstrom was real good with 28 saves. The Wild was outshot 29-16 but again kept it simple and withstood Calgary's third-period push.

Clayton Stoner was very, very impressive in his first game in three weeks. And Jared Spurgeon remains cool as a cucumber.

Wild killed Jarome Iginla's nine-game point streak.

Only bad news: Nick Schultz sustained an upper body injury in the third period. Richards didn't think it was serious, but it sounds like he's a question mark in Monday's rematch against Calgary in Minnesota.

Now the Wild has to do it at home. As Miettinen told me, the Wild plays too loose at home. Tonight it was successful by playing simple hockey. Let's see if they can do it again in Monday's rematch.

The Wild's not practicing Sunday, so unless there's news or a Schultz update, no blog until after Monday's morning skate.