by By Bruce Brothers bbrothers@pioneerpress.com , St. Paul Pioneer Press

Since falling behind and never recovering in a 5-2 loss to Vancouver on Thursday night, the coaching staff has urged, cajoled and prodded the players to do things differently.

They responded Saturday night, grabbing an early 2-0 lead and defeating the Dallas Stars 3-2 at the Xcel Energy Center.

The Wild's best 60 minutes of the season?

"It was," coach Todd Richards said.

The win was the Wild's third in their past four games heading into a four-game road trip that begins Tuesday night in Toronto.

This one had plenty to entertain a crowd of 18,558, including two goals deflected into their own nets by defensemen, a short-handed goal by Cal Clutterbuck to get the Wild started and an unheard-of lead of 17-4 in shots on goal by the Wild in the first period.

"They were ready to go," Richards said.

Finally. After numerous lethargic starts while going 5-10 through 15 games, the Wild got going in high gear thanks to four minutes of power plays in the first 4:23 of the game. The Wild built a 5-0 edge in shots on goal through the power plays and upped that to 8-0 after seven minutes.

Can you say momentum?

"The difference today was the power play," Clutterbuck said. "Even though we didn't score, we generated some shots and some momentum."

When Brent Burns took a double-minor for high sticking at 8:49, it gave the Stars, playing the second night of back-to-back games, a golden chance to turn things around.

Instead, less than a minute later, Clutterbuck pushed the puck out of the Minnesota zone, broke down the right side, glanced at Mikko Koivu skating down the left side and then shot from the right circle, beating Stars goalie Alex Auld top shelf after 9:46 of the period.

It was the first short-handed goal for the Wild this season and the first shorty of Clutterbuck's career.

Dallas did not get a shot on goal until nearly 12 1/2 minutes into the game, and Koivu's goal with 2:02 left in the period made it all Wild with a 2-0 score.

After the buzzer, the sellout crowd gave the Wild one of the biggest cheers of the young season for not only launching 17 shots, but for rarely permitting the Stars to even get close to Wild goalie Niklas Backstrom.

"The first period," Clutterbuck said, "we smothered 'em pretty good."

"We got off to a shaky start," Stars forward Mike Modano admitted. "But we climbed ourselves back into the game and did some good things to give us a chance at it."

Dallas got a power-play goal early in the second period when a shot by Loui Eriksson from behind the red line to the right of the net deflected off defender Nick Schultz and behind Backstrom at the 3:33 mark, giving the Stars a temporary boost.

But a Minnesota offense led by Martin Havlat, Marek Zidlicky, Eric Belanger and Clutterbuck kept the pressure on, and even after Dallas tied the score when Eriksson deflected in a power-play shot by Brad Richards at the 15:51 mark of the second period, the Wild didn't waver.

Said Schultz: "The coaches talked before about trying not to lose, you know, instead of going out there and trying to win the game and playing to our strengths. That's getting on the puck and keeping guys going hard and getting after the puck."

"In the second, we had a little letdown," Belanger said, "but we stayed composed."

About two minutes after the Stars tied it up, Zidlicky carried the puck behind the Dallas net and flipped it in front. He then celebrated his first goal of the season when Stars defenseman Nicklas Grossman inadvertently knocked the puck into his net for the winning goal at the 18:12 mark.

Zidlicky, who assisted on Koivu's goal and whose four shots on net tied for second on the team behind Clutterbuck's six, had to smile about that.

"A little lucky," he said.

Sweet deliverance.

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