In St Paul, Filip Gustavsson made 41 saves in a 2-0 shutout of the Florida Panthers on Thursday night.
“It’s not going to be like that every night, that’s for sure,” Gustavsson said. “It’s on the limit a few times. It’s very close that the puck goes by me. But sometimes you’re lucky, and you create your own luck.”
Brock Faber supplied all the offense that Gustavsson when he scored at 7:54 of the first period for a 1-0 lead.
“[Florida is] such an aggressive team as far as how much pressure they put on you,” Wild coach Dean Evason said. “We didn’t get out of our zone as quickly as we’d like in the first period, but we like the way the guys adjusted. We started to get out and into their zone a little more.
“They’re a hard team to play against. They play hard, they play fast. They’ve got really good sticks. Fortunately, our defensive zone was good. Our penalty kill was good. Our goaltender was great.”
Joel Eriksson Ek added some insurance in the second period on a power play goal at 12:56.
“They tried to go down to check and get the cross pass to (Evan) Rodrigues to try and go low across there, and it’s always hard,” Gustavsson said. “You have to respect the (Matthew) Tkachuk wraparound there too. Then when you’re down on your knees, it’s hard to cover as much.”
“I liked our game,” Panthers coach Paul Maurice said. “The result is always the most important thing, to win a hockey game, but I’m not disappointed. I thought the power play got some looks. But the 4-on-3 portion of our penalty kill, the goal that we gave up was just a bit of a bad break. It was off a stick. Honestly, I was comfortable with it.”
It was not for lack of trying that the Panthers lost. They outshot the Wild 14-5 in the first and 15-5 in the final frame.
“[Matt Boldy] gave it to me and I obviously had a lane and there were a bunch of screens in front,” Faber said. “I saw far side and kind of just hoped. It was more just a shot to get it down there than to pick a corner, but [I] got lucky.
“Everyone just kind of started skating towards me, so I figured something good happened.”
Sergei Bobrovsky made 19 saves in the loss.
“I mean, we had 41 shots or something, so I think we’ve got to score on a couple at least,” Florida captain Aleksander Barkov said. “It’s hard when you don’t score to win hockey games.”
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