The Wild won its sixth straight game and improved to 8-1-3 in its past 12 tonight thanks to a 5-2 win over the Nashville Predators.
Amazingly, the one regulation loss in there was the game in Vancouver where the Wild rallied from 4-2 down in the third to tie it and looked like it was heading to overtime until a shot going a million feet wide pin-balled in against Darcy Kuemper.
The next day, Bruce Boudreau made the Wild practice in Calgary rather than scrap it as a reward, and the Wild has points in seven straight since (6-0-1).
Tonight, the score looks like a blowout, but that's because of empty-net goals by Eric Staal and Mikael Granlund. This thing was a hold-on-for-dear-life game for the Wild after a three-goal first period, including two goals 29 seconds apart by Charlie Coyle and Staal in the final 1:23.
But Devan Dubnyk, especially after Mike Fisher scored on a power play in the first half of the second period, was brilliant yet again. He finished with 34 saves despite the Wild being outshot 23-9 the last 40 minutes. And, remember, two of those nine shots were the empty-netters.
His best save was a thievery on Ryan Johansen on a third-period power play that Bruce Boudreau said lifted the team the rest of the way. The Wild did give up very little the final seven minutes after that stop.
Nino Niederreiter screened Pekka Rinne on the first goal – a Jonas Brodin power-play goal – and had the first assists on goals by Coyle and Staal. For Coyle, it was his 10th goal in his 300th game. For Staal, it was the first in his second two-goal game of the season.
Remember, he told me he's in a heated battle with brother Jordan for most goals this season. Eric went from seven to nine tonight, putting him three up on his Carolina Hurricanes bro for an expensive bottle of red wine.
