In St Paul, Marc-Andre Fleury made 16 saves for the Wild in a 2-0 shutout of the visiting Anaheim Ducks on Thursday. 
“Yeah, felt good,” Fleury said. “I didn’t do much back there. The guys were awesome. Lot of blocked shots. ‘D’ in front boxing out, taking rebounds. I thought we played solid. We didn’t give them much. So, it’s nice to get that one and celebrate the win.”
The Wild improved to 33-27-7 off their fifth win in six games, they are 5-01 over the last six.
“This is the time where you have to play your best, when it matters the most,” Minnesota coach John Hynes said. “And I think lots of times there’s different segments in the season, but this is one where you’re playing meaningful games that you need to be able to play your best in those situations.”
The Wild took a 1-0 lead at 14:44 of the opening stanza on a long range shot from Zach Bogosian.
The Ducks dropped to 23-40-3 off their fourth straight loss.
“Like always, he’s just so good back there,” the Ducks’ Jackson LaCombe said of Dostal. “Whenever we need him, he shows up. He was great.”
Kirill Kaprizov scored at 2:17 of the middle frame to extend the Wild advantage to 2-0.
“It’s easy when you start scoring more goals,” Kaprizov said. “It’s feeling better, and you feel better on the ice and locker room, everything. …It’s big time for us now, for the team. We still have chance to go in playoffs.”
Lukas Dostal made 29 saves in the loss.
“[Minnesota] blocked a lot of shots,” Ducks coach Greg Cronin. “They packed the inside third of the ice, and we couldn’t get them through. They were blocking them out at the blue line, they were blocking at the net, and they did a really good job keeping us to the outside.
“I think we played well. We just weren’t good enough tonight.”
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