The Latest Breaking News from Ville Husso

The Wild improved the power play and penalty kill, cleaning up the messes from the dud two nights earlier, and that helped the team solve the biggest problem of them all.

For a couple weeks as Minnesota and St. Louis jockeyed down the stretch for playoff position, all the talk was about home-ice advantage. Who would get it? How much of a factor would it be?

ST. LOUIS — Sometimes all you have to do is what’s expected of you.

CALGARY, Alberta — All the ingredients were present for another disaster.

EDMONTON, Alberta — After the Blues’ second win in three days over the Vancouver Canucks, veteran David Perron consciously pumped the breaks. The Blues needed to put together four or five consecutive wins, Perron cautioned, before they could start to feel like they had something going.

VANCOUVER — The best cure for whatever ails the Blues this season continues to be to go west. To wit, the Blues have dominated the Pacific Division, and that continued to be the case Wednesday at Rogers Arena.

ST. LOUIS — There are a lot of ways for a team to get a win in the face of a prolonged series of losses and subpar play, and the simplest is the road the Blues took on Monday: Have a goalie play a great game.

It was a stretch of games on the schedule, three in four days, that probably caused Carolina coach Rod Brind’Amour to shudder a bit — at St. Louis, at Washington, at Tampa Bay.

WASHINGTON – Before at least some of the Blues went to sleep Monday night, they found themselves out of second place in the Central, and all the way into the fourth spot – a wild-card spot – in the division.