Wild wing Maxim Shabanov unsheathes his ‘Radulov’

For a guy who had just scored his sixth goal in the NHL, and his first with the Minnesota Wild, Maxim Shabanov looked like a guy who had practiced his celly a time or two. Shabanov, who turns 26 on Thursday, was playing just his third game for Minnesota and has yet to crack 50 NHL games in his second North American season. He had already seen what should have been his first Wild goal taken off the board in the first period Tuesday because of a quick whistle. But with the Wild up 1-0 in the second, less than two minutes after his linemate and countryman Danila Yurov had opened the scoring, Shabanov got a puck on the flank to the right of Buffalo s net and snapped a low shot past the goalie. Shabanov, who played four years in Russia s top hockey league before breaking into the NHL with the New York Islanders last season, twirled his stick, then pushed it down like he was sheathing a sabre. Although his English remains a work in progress, in the postgame locker room