In St Paul, Alex Ovechkin struck twice to help the Washington Capitals edge the Minnesota Wild, 4-3, on Sunday.
Braden Holtby got the win for the Caps in St Paul – file photo by Lewis Bleiman
“I think both teams was really hungry for those points, and I think they need it as much as we need those points,” Evgeny Kuznetsov said. “I think we played a great job. They dump a lot of pucks, and I think we got close support, all five guys coming back. That’s what gave us success today.”
Braden Holtby made 37 saves to get the win.
“It was a hard one. [Minnesota] worked hard. Really hard,” Holtby said. “[Coach Dean Evason’s] got them buzzing over there, so good challenge. It was a good, hard-fought game. We’ll take two points, but it wasn’t easy.”
Zach Parise, Kevin Fiala and Ryan Donato scored for the Wild.
“It felt like a playoff game,” Fiala said. “We were fighting from the start to the end. It didn’t go our way.”
Richard Panik and Tom Wilson added single markers for the Caps.
“The effort was there,” Parise said. “We competed hard, and we’ve been going that direction for the last little while, and that works for us. Didn’t get the outcome that we wanted to, but I feel like if we play like that more often than not, we’re going to find ourselves in a lot of games and a chance to win a lot of games. Just couldn’t pull it off tonight.”
[WATCH: All Capitals vs. Wild highlights]
Alex Stalock made 26 saves in the loss.
“Just because we worked hard and we lost, we can’t get down. … The next game against [the Nashville Predators on Tuesday] is a huge game,” Minnesota’s Marcus Foligno said. ” If we play like that, most nights we’re going to be successful. It’s tough to lose this where we know we could’ve jumped in there and climbed up a little bit quicker. But we still have the belief of getting in there.”
You must be logged in to post a comment.