In Anaheim Sunday night, Bruce Boudreau returned to his stomping grounds and ended up defeating his old tea, the Ducks, 2-1.
His new team, the Minnesota Wild, got two goals from the blue line as Matt Dumba and Jared Spurgeon scored in the middle frame to give the Wild all the offense they needed.
“I love it,” Boudreau said. “… When you win, it’s easy to face the questions (about being back). I saw an awful lot of people that I knew and treated me really well when I was 
here. It was a good birthday present.”
Devan Dubnyk backed up those two scores with 23 saves for the win.
“He’s candid and he’s emotional, he’s a human being, and you can tell this game meant a lot to him,” Dubnyk said. “It meant a lot to us as well. It was nice to get this one for him.”
Ryan Kesler scored Anaheim’s only goal as they fell to 21-13-8.
“We gave this one away tonight, and it’s not a good feeling,” Kesler said. “They’re obviously a good team, but saying that, I think we gave away points tonight. We had the better team in the first and third, it was just that second period for a couple minutes there when we gave it away.”
Minnesota’s goals came on a 5-on-3 Dumba power play goals and Spurgeon scored less than two minutes later.
“We had a pretty good first, did a lot of good things, but we had a bad second period,” the Ducks’ Andrew Cogliano said. “They outworked us, and that’s why we took a couple of penalties. They seemed to have a little bit more energy in the second, which is probably unacceptable in terms of the situation. That’s when they won the game. We got our game back in the third and probably could’ve had one.”
WATCH: All Wild vs. Ducks highlights
John Gibson made 34 saves in the loss.
“I don’t want to get fired anymore. I don’t want to keep getting that experience,” Boudreau said when asked about facing the Ducks.
Anaheim lost the game on the two-man deficit despite having given up only one goal in the penalty. Minnesota controlled the play as the Ducks regained full strength.
“We got out of sorts and took a penalty. We gave up a 5-on-3 goal, and we don’t manage to clear the puck after Cam [Fowler] came out of the box,” Anaheim head coach Randy Carlyle said. “We still had five guys on the ice, but we never really cleared the puck out of the zone and give them another power-play goal. That was the difference in the game. We weren’t physically involved in the game, and mentally it was like we lost ourselves for 15 or so minutes.”
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