In St Paul, the Winnipeg Jets, who have rediscovered their game when they needed it most, grabbed a 3-1 win on Tuesday night over the Wild.
The win secured the second wild card spot for the Jets in the Western Conference.
“I know people had written us off there for a while,” Winnipeg coach Rick Bowness said “We just fought through it. Every team that gets into the playoffs at this time of year … you’ve got to fight through some adversity. You’ve got to fight through some second-guessing, and that’s fine. That’s all part of our business, but again, give our players full marks because they stayed focused on the process of what we had to do, game in and game out, to get us into the playoffs. So good for them.”
Adam Lowry and Mark Scheifele scored in the first period to give Winnipeg a 2-0 lead and that was enough to propel them to the win.
“That was a huge game. It’s a big feeling,” Scheifele said. “We did it on our own. We didn’t wait for other things to happen. We handled it tonight and it feels good.”
Connor Hellebuyck made 33 saves.
“That one felt pretty good, I’ll tell you that,” Hellebuyck said. “We battled our adversity. It might have taken us a little bit longer, but I think we figured ourselves out. We have the character in the room, and now we know what our game is. To come out and show it through this stretch is huge.”
The Jets improved to 46-32-3.
“I play with some really good players that get me the puck in good situations,” said Scheifele, who has scored 42 goals this season. “Just got to keep it going.”
Kirill Kaprizov was the lone striker for the Wild, his third period goal trimmed the Wild deficit to 2-1.
“Yeah, we got two really bad bounces for the first two goals, right? They had four shots and two goals,” Wild coach Dean Evason said. “We had to start behind the eight ball, but we competed and we played right. We didn’t catch a couple of bounces, but we had lots of real good opportunities. We played a real strong game. They did. It was a good hockey game.”
Mason Appleton s scored at 14:06 of the third for the 3-1 final.
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Marc-Andre Fleury made 17 saves in the loss.
“Definitely (a) better effort, (a) full 60 minutes,” Fleury said. “They got some lucky bounces in the first there. We had a few posts, a few knobs. Could have been a little different game, but definitely better.”
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