Belanger injury adds to Wild's pain in loss to Canucks: Injury to Belanger adds to their pain as Canucks cruise

Nov 06, 2009 (Pioneer Press - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- XEL | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating -- The painful beginning to the Wild's season took one to the midsection Thursday night.

A team with just five wins in 14 games before the opening faceoff snoozed through a first period so uneventful that only the scattered boos kept many in the Xcel Energy Center crowd of 18,105 awake.

When it was over, the Wild had absorbed a 5-2 loss at the hands of the Vancouver Canucks that snapped their two-game win streak and left them with an ugly winning percentage of .333.

That first period was a beauty.

"We weren't prepared coming into the game," said center Kyle Brodziak, who scored both his team's goals and was one of the few bright spots in the Wild lineup. "Our first period, it was unbelievable how bad we played. We just weren't skating, and it looked like we weren't ready to battle."

Here are some ugly statistics from that first period: The Wild managed just three shots on net, incurred a back-breaking double-minor penalty at the 20-minute mark that caused problems in the second period and -- hard to believe -- held the Canucks without a shot on goal through the final 14 minutes of the period.

Yawn.

The period ended with Vancouver up 1-0 on Darcy Hordichuk's first goal in his past 50 games and his first shot of the season, an unassisted goal at 3:49 of the first period after he stepped in front of James Sheppard's pass in the Wild zone.

This game was so frustrating for a team that believed it had started to bounce back from a 3-9 start

that the dressing room emptied out faster than a junior high physics classroom when the bell rings.

On top of that, the Wild lost center Eric Belanger to an upper-body injury.

Belanger, tied for the team lead in scoring and the lone Minnesota player who had half a chance to score in the first period, left the game late in the second period and did not return.

Canucks goaltender Andrew Raycroft was tested when Belanger got his stick on a pass between the hashmarks and got off a quick shot on a Minnesota power play near the end of the first period, but Raycroft was there for the save.

"We played good. We killed all the penalties," Raycroft said.

The double-minor penalty taken by Minnesota's Derek Boogaard after the horn ended the first period gave Vancouver a four-minute power play to begin the second, and the Canucks made it 2-0 when Mason Raymond's power-play bullet beat goaltender Niklas Backstrom at the 2:20 mark.

Coach Todd Richards was not pleased. Boogaard, whose second penalty was for unsportsmanlike conduct, did not get a single shift in the second period.

"You shoot yourself in the foot," Richards said. "He's coming over to help out a teammate, and I can accept the first one, but the second one is just going back at the referee. When things aren't going good, that's exactly what happens, and we can't have that."

The good news was that the second goal by the Canucks seemed to get the Wild going and Brodziak pounded in a rebound two minutes later to make it 2-1.

"We were behind 2-0 and then we decided to play and get involved in the game," Richards said. "That's what's most disappointing for me, because it's there, and you see it in games where we can crank it up and get going, but it's got to happen from the start."

With the score 2-1, the Wild yielded their fourth short-handed goal -- they lead the NHL in that ignominious statistic -- to Henrik Sedin at 12:14 of the second period.

"You talk about deflating," Richards said. "We give up a short-handed goal and it's crushing."

Brodziak knocked in another goal just 33 seconds later to make it 3-2, but Matt Pettinger scored to give the Canucks some breathing room two minutes later, and an empty-netter ended it.

Richards didn't like much of what he saw.

"All you have to do is look at the standings and see," he said. "There's gotta be desperation and urgency in every single game that we play. When we did play with that desperation and urgency, we created a lot, and we created the buzz. And it seemed when we got close and we had some momentum going, we'd give up a goal."

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