The slumping Minnesota Wild limped into Anaheim Wednesday night and left with their fifth straight loss as the Ducks’ Rickard Rakell scored the game-winner with just over six minutes left in regulation.
Corey Perry and Patrick Maroon assisted on the tic-tac-toe play.
“I don’t know how many times we do that in practice but it was nice to see it go in,” Rakell said. “It’s huge for us. We’ve been talking about getting all the points we can get and we played a pretty solid game tonight.”
For Rakell, it was his 10th of the season, a career best.
“It was a really nice goal, there’s no doubt,” Ducks coach Bruce Boudreau said. “But it was a pretty sloppy game and ended up with a beautiful, beautiful goal.”
Jarret Stoll put the Wild up 1-0 in the first period.
“It’s not easy, it’s not fun,” Wild forward Mikael Granlund said. “Everybody knows that, but we can’t feel sorry for ourselves. We need to keep doing things better and tomorrow we have a new chance.”
Chris Stewart tied the game at one all with a goal midway through the first.
Boudreau juggled lines on the night and had Ryan Getzlaf centered with Stewart and newcomer David Perron to get more offense.
“It was such a sloppy game, it was hard to tell,” Boudreau said. “[Ryan] Getzlaf’s line got a goal, [Andrew] Cogliano’s line got a goal and Perry’s line got a goal. We got three goals from three different lines, which is good.”
The new linemates was a chore for Getzlaf as well but the Ducks recognize the need for wins against western conference opposition if they are to make a playoff push.
“You’re going to take some learning curves,” Getzlaf said. “You’re going to need to know different people and where they’re going to be. But we’ve got to find ways to work guys into the lineup and get their minutes. I thought tonight was a pretty good job of that.”
Jakob Silfverberg scored an empty-netter to seal the win.
John Gibson made 25 saves in the win.
“When it comes down to crunch time, we need to be prepared to give it all we’ve got,” Wild forward Charlie Coyle said. “Nothing to hold back. They tightened up and they played a little better when they got out there and we’ve got to do the same.”
Devan Dubnyk made 24 saves in the loss.
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