Game #65: Minnesota Wild at New York Rangers, Thursday March 3, 2011 at 6:00pm CST, Madison Square Gardens [GAME PREVIEW]

  
 I don’t know if this is reassuring or just plain annoying, but today Wild players are accepting blame for last night’s result.  While that’s all well and good, perhaps they should have come to that realization during the first intermission.  Saying such things after a game, won’t change matters.  In fact, they’re just words, and they come too little, too late.  If they really had felt that way at all night, they should have done something about it, before it was too late.  And now here we are, even further back in the pack, falling to 11th place.  Probably the comment that annoys me the most, comes from Kyle Brodziak: “We’ve got to stop the slide now.”  Um, Kyle have you not looked at the standings?  There hasn’t been room for “a slide” since the All-Star break. 

And if you didn’t feel that things were bad enough, now I get to deliver even more bad news.  Madison Square Gardens, home of the New York Rangers, has not been a kind building for the Wild.  In the Wild’s ten year history, they are an abysmal 1-4 at MSG.  With that kind of record, I personally don’t hold out much hope for tonight.  There’s going to have to be a sustained, concerted effort from the beginning.  And like Andrew Brunette talked about regarding last night’s game, they’re goingto have to finish on their chances.  Of course that may end up difficult to do, because for whatever reason, the Wild not only play poorly in MSG, but they’ve found little success against the Rangers in general. 

Tonight also another night of two banged up teams.  Wild fans won’t see either Marian Gaborik or Derek Boogaard on their television screens tonight.  Nor will we see Chris Drury, Alex Frolov, or Martin Biron.  The Rangers also have a couple of additional players who are listed as questionable for the night.  The Wild of course are without Mikko Koivu.  Adding to the injured is Cam Barker (which isn’t always a bad thing) and once again Chuck Kobasew is out, although tonight with an illness. 

So here we go.  Will the Wild attempt to claw themselves out of the hole of their own creation?  Or will they simply dig themselves in deeper?

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