Fleury earns 552nd win in shutout of Islanders Eriksson Ek hits for double in win

In St Paul, the Wild finally got their game together for Marc-Andre Fleury on Monday night.

Fleury had been sitting on 551 career NHL wins for what seemed an eternity, before the Wild met the New York Islanders.

Mats Zuccarello  scored off the power play  at 2:11 of the opening stanza, and that was enough to get Fleury his 552nd career win, good for second all time in the league, in a 5-0 shutout of the Islanders.

“Finally, right? It’s been a little rough lately,” Fleury said. “I wish we could have done this a little while ago, right? But I think everybody knows, everyone in this room, that we try to work our best and try to win games, climb our way back, right, and tonight that was a great game against a good team and we got that one.”

The Wild moved to 18-20-5 snapping a four-game losing streak.

“Well, I score once every 20 games, so it’s nice to get one now and then,” Zuccarello said. “I think we played a solid team game. Everyone contributed, whether it was a block shot, a goal, PK, ‘Flower’, everything. That’s the team game we have to play, and hopefully we can build on that and get on a run here. We have a tough stretch coming up.”

Feeling the potential for getting the win, the Wild outshot New York, 20-3 in the middle frame, and scored twice to take control of the contest.

“I thought it was a really good, solid game,” Wild coach John Hynes said. “I think we cleaned up a lot of areas that we felt in the last four-game stretch were major issues, and tonight the players did a great job of executing and playing the game the right way.”

Connor Dewar pushed the leaded to 2-0 at 2:18 of the middle frame.

Joel Eriksson Ek hit for his first of a double on the night, off the power play, at 13:36 for a 3-0 advantage headed to the third.

The Islanders dropped to 19-14-10. They have lost six of their last eight matches.

“I just didn’t like our effort at all,” Islanders coach Lane Lambert said. “I didn’t think we were 100 percent committed to playing the game the right way right from the start and it just kind of snowballed as we went along.”

Eriksson Ek collected his double off a shorthanded strike at 16:09 of the third period to balloon the lead to 4-0.

Marcus Foligno added a little salt to the wound when he potted a marker with 57 seconds left on the game clock for the 5-0 final count on the scoreboard.

“That was us,” Foligno said. “I think we honestly just snapped out of it a little bit. Jonas Brodin, we all realize what he does. He breaks out the puck a lot. He’s back there so quickly, so we got him back there. It makes guys settle. Guys were making better plays. That’s what we need. We needed a little more plays from guys, and we got it. It was special that we played the way we did.”

Ilya Sorokin got the start for the Isles, but was given the hook after making 29 saves, yielding three goals before getting the hook in the second intermission..

“Sorokin had seen enough rubber,” Lambert said. “I thought he came [in] and did as good a job as he could do.”

Kenneth Appleby who made six saves in a mop up role.

“We didn’t do anything very well tonight,” the Islanders’ Anders Lee said. “They were on top of us quite a bit and we couldn’t get to our game. I think our effort needs to be elevated and we need to have a better showing. We got to get (mad). I mean, there’s a lot of little things that add up to a poorly played hockey game.”