Chuck Kobasew (right) celebrates his third goal with Mikko Koivu (AP Photo)
Antti Miettinen picked the wrong time to get sick.
Chuck Kobasew, filling in for Miettinen on his normal line, finished with a hat-trick, and Andrew Brunette’s power play goal at the 11:02 mark of the third period put the Wild in front to stay as Minnesota topped division rival Colorado 5-3 in a hard-fought post-Thanksgiving matinee at the Xcel Energy Center.
Owen Nolan also scored for the Wild; Mikko Koivu finished with three assists and Greg Zanon two as the Wild tied their season high with five goals; a mark they have reached just once before this season.
Kyle Quincey, Paul Statsny and Chris Stewart all scored for Colorado, who held leads of 1-0 and 2-1 in the first and second periods, respectively, before the Wild took over in the third.
Quincey opened the scoring with a wrister from the high slot off of a feed from super rookie Matt Duchene at the 5:58 mark of the first, but Nolan tied the score three and a half minutes later, taking a rebound from a Zanon shot and beating a lunging Craig Anderson.
Kobasew scored his first two goals in almost identical fashion. Setting up in front of the goal, he banged home one-time shots over the right shoulder of Anderson. His first goal was set up by tough guy Derek Boogaard, who recorded his first point since December 19th of 2008, also an assist.
After two periods of even play, Minnesota dominated the third period action. Though it took them over eleven minutes to score in the period, they had several sequences of extended pressure. After one stretch of nearly two minutes of consistent action around Anderson’s net, the fans at the Xcel Energy Center gave the players a brief standing ovation for the effort.
After Brunette put the Wild in front on the power play, Minnesota withstood a brief stretch of Colorado pressure before Mikko Koivu set up Kobasew’s third goal with a great individual effort. Koivu out muscled a Colorado defender at the Minnesota blue line to first clear the puck, and then protected it as two more Colorado players closed in on him in the offensive zone before sliding a pass to a wide open Kobasew in front of goal. The Wild winger sheepishly skated the puck into the empty net before skating directly over to Koivu in appreciation for the hard work.
It was Kobasew’s second career hat trick and his first since January 24, 2006, also against Colorado. Kobasew was then a member of the Calgary Flames.
The game marked the debut of the newest member of the Wild, Guillaume LaTendresse, whose visa was approved on Wednesday after being acquired from Montreal on Monday. He arrived Thursday night. Skating on a line with Cal Clutterbuck and Kyle Brodziak, the 6’2” 230 pound winger finished the night -1 with four hits in just over 14 minutes of ice time.
The Wild improved to 6-2-1 all time in their annual post-Thanksgiving game. The two teams will meet again Saturday night in Denver to complete the home-and-home series.
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