Here’s a game where it’s difficult to find the first star.
But we will start with the Minnesota Wild’s Devan Dubnyk who made 25 saves in a 3-0 shutout of the Lighting in Tampa on Thursday night.
Jason Zucker scored a hat trick in Wild win over Tampa – file photo by Lewis Bleiman
“For whatever reason, we certainly seem to play our best against the best teams,” Dubnyk said. “You could see tonight from start to finish we were extremely focused and determined. Everything they got or tried to get, they were forced to make plays. That’s how you have to play that team, because if you give them opportunities, it’s going to get ugly for you.”
Meanwhile, Jason Zucker was the only goal scorer in the entire as he picked up the hat trick for the Wild.
“I’m just trying to work hard, that’s all it is,” Zucker said. “My linemates (Donato or Jordan Greenway with center Eric Staal) are playing great, and we’re just trying to be a cohesive unit.”
The Lighting dropped to 51-13-4.
“You just have to stay within the system,” Lightning forward Tyler Johnson said. “We know we are a good team and we are going to get those chances, but I thought for parts of the game, we kind of got away from what we wanted to do.”
Minnesota is 6-0-2 in their eight games and is four points clear for the second wild card spot in the west.
“[The Wild] are a very well-coached team, a very disciplined team,” Tampa Bay’s Dan Girardi. “They didn’t turn many pucks over, they clogged up the neutral zone. When we got pucks deep, we were very successful and had some offensive-zone time. But we tried to force some plays just inside the blue line, turnovers that fueled their rush.”
[WATCH: All Wild vs. Lightning highlights]
Andrei Vasilevskiy made 27 saves in the loss.
“You play the regular season to play in the playoffs and to make sure by the time you get to the playoffs that your game is in order,” Lightning coach Jon Cooper said. “I’ve liked the way we’ve played for most of the year. You are not going to win them all. It was a little frustrating tonight because we needed to kind of dumb down our game tonight and we didn’t do it, and that fed right into them.”
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