In St Paul Saturday, the Anaheim Ducks’ Nick Ritchie put an end to an interminable shootout with the deciding goal after 11-round skills competition.
The goal pushed the Ducks to a 3-2 win.
“Anytime you win a shootout that goes that long, you [have to] feel fortunate you got the extra point,” Ducks head coach Randy Carlyle said. “There’s big stops by our goaltender (John Gibson), and finally found a guy that found the back of the net, Nick Ritchie, five-hole shot, so we’ll take it and move on.”
Anaheim improved to 29-20-11 with the win and sit in third place in the Pacific Division, a long way from where they started the season trailing nearly everyone in the west except the Arizona Coyotes.
“Our goal is to qualify for the playoffs. We’re on the road here and we’ve got our hockey club back together,” Carlyle said after the win. “We’ve started to get our hockey club back together and we’ve stated that we’re going to have to earn our points down the road and this is just one of the examples of it, but we’re not going to get too far ahead of ourselves. There’s lots of hockey left, lots of points available to the teams we’re competing with, and I’m pretty sure you’re going to see it go right down to the wire.”
Corey Perry and Ondrej Kase scored for the Ducks.
“We knew what was at stake tonight,” Perry said. “They’re a good hockey team over there. They pressure. They skate. They play hard. We were fortunate enough to find the bounce in that third period and then take it in the shootout.”
The Wild dropped to 31-20-7 with the loss and for now sit one point clear of the Calgary Flames for a wild card spot in the west.
“Every game is big. Every single game I think from here on in is going to be like this,” Minnesota head coach Bruce Boudreau said. “It’s a grind for an awful lot of teams and it’s going to be a battle of attrition. I think whichever team can handle it the best is going to succeed.”
John Gibson made 29 saves to get the win.
“It’s always focus on [getting] two points,” Gibson said. “I didn’t have the best of luck so far in the year. Maybe I was a little too tense. It’s not me. So I just went out there and tried to have fun.”
Mikko Koivu and Jason Zucker scored for the Wild.
[WATCH:Â All Ducks vs. Wild highlights]
Devin Dubnyk made 36 saves in taking the loss.
“I hope not. But it’s been like this since game two, so now we’re at game 58, Anaheim’s at game 60. I don’t see it changing too much,” Boudreau said. “I though initially it would be like a golf tournament where Thursday and Friday everybody’s tight and Saturday’s tight and it gets to be a little bit moving and by Sunday it sort of gets a life of its own and the cream comes to the top. I think there’s a lot of teams, I guess, that are good this year.”
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