Wild continue to thrive, shut down Hurricanes in 4-0 victory

RALEIGH, N.C. – The Carolina Hurricanes average the most shots in the NHL, and Filip Gustavsson is almost unbeatable when he faces a plethora of pucks.

But this dream matchup for the Wild goaltender didn’t play out as expected.

That’s because the Wild players in front of Gustavsson held Carolina in check, the 4-0 dismissal Saturday at Lenovo Center one of their cleanest efforts of the season to sweep their road trip with their third consecutive win and fifth in six games.

“It was a fairly quiet night,” Gustavsson said.

Mats Zuccarello had two goals and an assist and Marco Rossi a career-high four assists, while Gustavsson finished with 21 saves for his third shutout of the season — a timid workload for the Hurricanes, who have registered at least 40 shots in a game six times and even boast a 50-shot performance.

“We were disciplined with the puck,” coach John Hynes said. “We didn’t expose ourselves to give them easy looks off the rush. Defensively, we were good at our own net.”

Carolina had a glorious opportunity to wind up early because just 1 minute, 32 seconds after the opening faceoff Joel Eriksson Ek was sent to the penalty box for 4 minutes for high sticking, but the Hurricanes failed to capitalize and tested Gustavsson only once.

That was Carolina’s lone shot for nearly eight minutes, the Hurricanes’ next a try by Andrei Svechnikov that Gustavsson gloved down, and the downtime didn’t affect Gustavsson: He was sharp later in the first, denying a deke from Seth Jarvis with his right pad before later stymieing Jarvis again on a 2-on-1.

“Maybe they had a little tougher night than usual,” Gustavsson said, “and we just played very good defensively and blocked a lot of shots.”

Meanwhile, the Wild were opportunistic at the other end.

Matt Boldy worked a 50-50 puck to Rossi, who set up Zuccarello for a one-timer at 13:03. (The Wild improved to 16-5-2 when scoring first.)

Then on their second of back-to-back power plays, Eriksson Ek tipped in a Zuccarello shot from the right point 11:30 into the second period to double the Wild’s lead on Eriksson Ek’s first goal in 18 games.

“The penalty kill definitely brought energy but also I think a mindset to our team,” Hynes said. “To be able to kill that off in the fashion that we did continued to drive our team in a positive direction.”

One puck did elude Gustavsson, when the rebound from a save bounced off defenseman Declan Chisholm’s back and tumbled into the Wild net.

But the Wild challenged to check if Carolina was offside before the goal, and the Hurricanes were: Former Eden Prairie High School standout Jackson Blake was still in the offensive zone going for a line change when Carolina brought the puck over the Wild blue line.

The Wild are now 5-for-5 on coach’s challenges.

“It would have been a bad way to let in a goal there,” Gustavsson said.

Ben Jones had what would have been his first NHL goal overturned later in the third period when the Hurricanes successfully challenged for goaltender interference on Pyotr Kochetkov by Jones.

Once Carolina pulled Kochetkov for an extra attacker, the Wild took advantage again, this time an empty-netter by Zuccarello with 2:46 to go that Boldy (three points) and Rossi factored into for the 10th four-assist game by a Wild player ever.

This was also the first four-point game of Rossi’s career, who has a team-high nine points in the five games the Wild have played since Kirill Kaprizov was sidelined with a lower-body injury.

“When you play more together, you kind of know and read more of the other guys, what they want to do and stuff like that,” Rossi said. “We do a pretty good job so far.”

BOXSCORE: Wild 4, Carolina 0

“It was kind of cold in the third period,” said Gustavsson, who posted a 40-save win in his previous game at Carolina and still prefers a high volume of shots.

Why wouldn’t he?

He is 10-1-2 with the Wild when he sees 39 shots or more.

“I’d rather work a lot,” said Gustavsson, who’s 18-6-3 with the third-best goals-against average (2.20) and save percentage (.926) in the NHL; he’s tied for third in wins and shutouts.

As for the Wild, they continue to roll on the road with the league’s best record (15-3-3) after also prevailing 4-3 in a shootout on Thursday at No. 3 Washington. They’re fourth in the league, one point behind the Capitals at 25-11-4 for the third-most victories through 40 games in franchise history.