In St Paul, Marc-Andre Fleury’s 1,000th career NHL goal ended with a 3-2 loss on Sunday to the Winnipeg Jets.
“I don’t know, I’m kind of happy it’s over,” Fleury said. “I wish it was a win. Disappointing. I thought the guys played great tonight. Battled hard. It’s a better game than last night in Winnipeg (a 4-2 loss). Two points is what’s important here. Obviously, very flattered by the reception from the crowd, from my teammates. It means a lot. I feel very fortunate that I’ve played for so long and I got to do what I love for many years. I’m lucky for that.”
Laurent Brossoit made 24 saves in the win,.
The jets improved to 22-9-4.
Winnipeg won both ends of the home-and-home series.
“Going into both games (of the home-and-home), you knew it was going to be a hard-fought battle,” Jets coach Rick Bowness said. “There wasn’t much room out there. Kind of [a] low-event game for a while. That’s the way both teams play. John (Hynes) has got these guys playing really, really hard. They’re tough to play against.”
The wild took a 1-0 lead on a goal by Marcus Foligno at 18:07 of the opening stanza..
“Better effort (today),” Foligno said. “It’s a tough game to lose, but all in all, it was a good game. It had everything. It’s tough to lose it for ‘Flower’ like that in that sense, 1,000 games, [heck] of an accomplishment. You want to win it for him. Disappointing the way it had to end there.”
In the middle frame, Adam Lowry scored at 2:08 to knot the game at 1-1.
“It’s something I’ll look back on and be proud of,” Lowry said. “I’m not necessarily known really for my scoring, so it’s nice to be able to contribute once in a while. Hopefully, I can score another 100 in this league and it doesn’t take me a decade.”
Minnesota dropped to 16-15-4.
“It’s disappointing you lost the game, for sure, but there’s lot of positives to take out of it,” Wild coach John Hynes said. “As you said, just how hard we fought. I thought we were right there. We had an opportunity to win the game, but I think when you get into these tight games like this against a really good team, it comes down to details, and tonight that was probably the difference in the game.
The Wild reclaimed the lead on a marker from and Frederick Gaudreau 3:56 of the third period.
The Jets wasted no time in replying to that goal.
Vladislav Namestnikov tied the game, 2-2 with just 56 elapsed.
“There is never quit on this team,” Namestnikov said. “I think we know it’s a 60-minute game. A lot can happen in that time. We go down, we just keep with our business and keep going.”
Dominic Toninato potted the game-winner at 7:32 off a rebound effort.
“You know what, even the run we’ve been on, there’s not a whole lot of separation in our division,” Lowry said. “We know how critical down the stretch divisional games are, and we know how hard it is to beat the same team on back-to-back nights. They make adjustments. Generally the team that lost comes out pretty hard and are able to rebound.
“They got off to a great start, credit to them, but we were able to fight our way back. Even in the third, we give up one on special teams, and that’s kind of been our Achilles’ heel all year. We’ve talked about that being the difference in the game. But ‘Vladdy’ answers right back with a power-play goal of our own, and that gives us the momentum right back. And then on a delayed penalty we get the game-winning goal. It was big back-to-back nights for us.”
Fleury made 26 saves in the loss..
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