GAME DAY RECAP Sunday, February 23
Walz scores twice as Minnesota topples St. Louis

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ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) -- In his ninth NHL season, Wes Walz is still playing some of his best hockey.

Walz scored two goals, and Antii Laaksonen had two assists as the Minnesota Wild beat the St. Louis Blues 3-1 Sunday night.

It's the second time that Walz, who has played for five NHL teams since 1990, has scored 11 goals in a season. His career high is 18 in the 2000-01 season with Minnesota. Walz has excelled in coach Jacques Lemaire's system and has become a leader on one of the league's most surprising teams.

''He's taken me under his wing and he gave me a role when I first came here, and that was to be a checker,'' Walz said. ''I was actually hoping he would give me a role like that. If you ask any player in the dressing room, they want to be a role player.''

Sunday, Walz centered the line of Laaksonen and All-Star Marian Gaborik against St. Louis' top line of Keith Tkachuk, Scott Mellanby and Pavol Demitra. Both lines came out aggressive, but Minnesota got two quick goals from Walz.

''That's a good line, top line in the league,'' Lemaire said of St. Louis' line. ''If you don't have speed against them, they could do a lot of damage.''

Manny Fernandez stopped 21 shots for Minnesota, which snapped its three-game losing streak and sent the Blues to their fifth defeat in six games.

St. Louis, which played its third game in four days, came into the game tied for first place in the Central Division with Detroit at 76 points.

Filip Kuba scored a short-handed goal for Minnesota, which went 0-for-5 on the power play but maintained its slim lead over Edmonton for the seventh playoff spot in the Western Conference.

Brent Johnson had 16 saves, and Demitra scored his fifth goal in five games for the Blues.

The game featured several minor skirmishes, but tensions boiled over with 2:13 left after Walz put a hard check on Demitra on the boards. Tkachuk hit Walz with his stick, knocking him to the ice. Then, Willie Mitchell jumped on Tkachuk's back and the teams piled on each other behind the Wild net.

Tkachuk got a match penalty for intent to injure. But he said he wasn't trying to hurt Walz.

''I just came in there and he had his stick up and I had my stick up and I just hit him in the shoulder and it went up,'' he said. ''If I wanted to hurt him I could have, but I held up. I would never attempt to hurt anybody.''

Walz said it was ''no big deal.''

''It's part of this game,'' he said.

The Wild grabbed the lead early when Walz scored 1:53 in. Walz picked up a rebound of Mitchell's shot and was able to sneak the puck over Johnson's right leg to make it 1-0.

Walz made it 2-0 5:40 later on a wrist shot from the left circle that beat Johnson's stick.

''When you get behind against a team like this, it plays right into their hands,'' Blues coach Joel Quenneville said. ''It's very frustrating, and I don't know how to get out of it.''

The Blues tied it with a power-play goal after Brad Brown was called for interference. Demitra picked up a loose puck during a scramble in front of the net and lifted it over Fernandez at 12:53.

Kuba nearly extended Minnesota's lead with just more than 13 minutes to play. But his hard slap shot from just inside the blue line clanked off the post.

But Kuba's next shot did find the back of the net. With Minnesota skating short-handed, Laaksonen found Kuba on a two-on-one breakaway and Kuba wristed it past Johnson at 9:28 for his fifth goal.

Game notes
Walz's last two-goal game was Jan. 8, 2002, against Montreal. ... Lemaire coached his 700th NHL game. He owns a 328-270-102 record. ... The Wild and the City of St. Paul played host to the eighth annual Willie O'Ree All-Star Game before the game. The event honors O'Ree, the NHL's first black player. ... Tkachuk's second-period assist extended his point streak to 12 games.

http://sports.espn.go.com/nhl/recap?gameId=230223030

Scheiss Walz!!! Bin doch für St. Louis!!