Yawn. That describes most of the action in last night's tilt between the Minnesota Wild and the Calgary Flames. After witnessing inspired, hard hitting efforts against the Anaheim Ducks and the Vancouver Canucks this week, warped minds and tangled brains were hoping this would be the night for the Wild to pull off the rare feat of leaving the Saddledome with two points. Nope. Aside from a few brief spurts of intense play, neither team looked all that interested in taking the division lead. It would've been fitting for the game to go into a shootout, but Craig Conroy spared everyone the tedium of an extra session by slaloming his way through a sleepwalking defense and zipping a backhander by Josh Harding. A Wild victory would've put them in a nice position heading into the All-Star break, but it was not meant to be.
Warpy awards start with James Sheppard. He didn't exactly have a spectacular Warpy-worthy game last night, but I forgot to give him props for his impressive play over the last several games, so he gets a delayed Warpy. Sheppard is a good stickhandler who plays well along the boards (almost as well as "velcro stick" Pierre-Marc Bouchard) and hustles all over the place on the defensive end, playing as solidly as a third defenseman. Heck, his D is at least as good as -- if not better than -- some other regular defensemen who have a 1 or a 5 on their jersey number. The strange Warpy of the night has to go to the Brent Burns three goalpost shot. I've seen a few shots go off both goalposts, but have never seen one hit both posts, then hit the first one again for good measure, with the puck straddling the goal line all the while. An Espy award would not surprise me in the least for this freakish play.
The Un-Warpy of the night has to go to Jacques Lemaire for once again shuffling his lines and defensive pairings like a casino dealer at a blackjack table, then wondering why he gets such inconsistent play from game to game. Line combinations that worked well together and got some good results in the Canucks game got scrambled worse than eggs on a bachelor stovetop last night, and it showed in the sloppy passing and tentative play on both ends of the ice. This is starting to get really old: if Lemaire still can't figure out the best line combinations after six plus seasons of coaching this team, perhaps it's time to give someone else a try (and that, my friends, will be the topic for at least one future blog by the Warped One). The strange Un-Warpy of the night goes to the plexiglass at the Saddledome: where do they get this stuff? Dalton Humphrey's Everything Store??
Bottom line: the better team -- or at least the less hypersomnolent one -- won last night. The Wild skating and passing was uninspired for most of the game, and the shooting was lacking in quantity, though there was some good quality. The Wild also spent too much time along the side and end boards, making life way too easy for the Flames defenders (not to mention giving warped minds plenty of material for a future blog on the state of Wild shooting, or the lack thereof..) We missed a good opportunity to unclog the logjam in the division and conference standings last night, and now it's on to Denver for another potential four pointer. Go Wild!!
