In St Paul, the Minnesota Wild lost their first home game since late January in a 5-4 win by the Colorado Avalanche on Monday night.
Philipp Grubauer made 21 saves to get the win, and the Avs scored four times in the middle frame.
“Where we are in the standings, first, second, third, we know it’s important, but it doesn’t necessarily make you the best team,” Avalanche head coach Jared Bednar said. “That has yet to be proven and has to be proven in the playoffs and not the regular season.”
Ryan Hartman had(three points), Nick Bjugstad (two points) and Marcus Johansson (two points) had a goal each for the Wild.
“We should have played the same in the second period,” Wild head coach Dean Evason said. “And I say the first was good. We still weren’t in their face enough, frustrating them and putting pressure on them as much as we would like to, or would have liked to, in the first period. We played good, but you can’t get down against any team obviously two, three goals. It’s very difficult to come back.”
The Wild nursed a 1-0 lead into the second period.
Nathan MacKinnon tied early in the middle frame.
scored on a breakaway 18 seconds into the second period to tie it 1-1 before Andre Burakovsky put the AVs up 2-1 at 1:29 of the period.
Brandon Saad pushed the lead to 3-1, and J.T. Compher extended the advantage to 4-1
“You have to have the balanced scoring,” Bednar said. “We know what our top guys are capable of, and they’ll run into games when they get shutdown or things don’t go their way or a goalie makes some saves.
“Depth is huge, and to have those guys spread out like that and scoring goals is a really important reason why we’re on the run we’re on.”
Hartman gave the Wild a 1-0 lead in the third period.
“We didn’t play them hard in the second period,” Hartman said. “We made it easy on them and we kind of kicked ourselves after the second, talked about how to play them, and guys pushed back and we made it a lot harder for them in the third period.”
The Wild replied early in the third period with a goal from Bjugstad to make it 4-2.
Gabriel Landeskog pushed the Avs advantage to 5-2 with a goal.
Johansson made 5-3 off a power-play goal midway through the third period.
Kevin Fiala scored with less than a minute left on the clock for the 5-4 final.
“I don’t think we ever lost our confidence,” Compher said. “We were able to finish it off, but we got to be better in the third, we got to be able to lock it down more. Let’s not let them get to a two-goal, one-goal lead. Play a little bit better earlier in the period, so when it comes to the end we’re not trying to keep them from tying it up.” 
Cam Talbot made 31 saves in the loss.
“I think we have shown we can play with them,” the Wild’s Joel Eriksson Ek said. “We know how to play, we’ve got to play them hard. I think they like when they get the game going back and forth, getting time. We just got to get close to them and make them work.”
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