In St Paul Tuesday, the Minnesota Wild used a four-goal second period to send the Carolina Hurricanes to a 6-2 defeat.
The four-goal outburst came in a span of less than four minutes.
Eric Staal struck twice in the win.
“We’ve got a lot of hockey still; we just want to keep building,” Staal said. “We gotta fight. It’s tough, our division’s tough. We’ve got a lot of great teams we’re playing on road games coming up. We gotta win every night, and we know that coming in. We just want to keep building our game and put ourselves in the best position we can for the playoffs.”
The Wild pushed their record to 38-227 with the win and are clear of the Dallas Stars by three points for third place in the Central Division.
“Everything he (Staal) touches — start calling him Midas from now on — it turns into gold. I hope it doesn’t end. He’s well-deserved of it,” Wild head coach Bruce Boudreau said after the game.
Nino Niederreiter, Zach Parise, Daniel Winnik, and Matt Cullen‘s also scored for the Wild.
Carolina dropped to 27-29-11 with the loss.
Devan Dubnyk made 29 saves in the win.
The Canes scored two cosmetic goals in the third period with Phillip DiGiuseppe end Derek Ryan finding the back of the net.
“I think at this point we don’t really want to take anything from this game,” Ryan said. “We just want to move on to the next game, playing [at] Chicago on Thursday and flush this game and make sure we’re coming out and playing the way we know how to play: at a high level and executing our systems. Let’s look past this one. Let’s get rid of it and move on.”
Carolina trails the second wild card spot in the east by four points.
“I think we’re looking to move on from this one, but at the same time we have to realize that when we play this way, this is the result,” Ryan said.
[WATCH:Â All Hurricanes vs. Wild highlights]
Cam Ward got the start for the Hurricanes but was pulled in the second period.
“You’ve got to remember how that feels,” Hurricanes head coach Bill Peters said. “Not a very good feeling, not a lot of fun playing like that, so you’ve got to remember that. We’ve got to compete at a higher level across the board.”
Scott Darling made 16 saves in a mop up effort.
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