In St Paul, the Los Angeles Kings’ Pierre-Luc Dubois scored two goals in a 12-second stretch in the first period in a 7-3 win over the Wild on Thursday night.
His first strike came at 19-02 for a 3-2 lead to LA, the second pushed the advantage to 4-2 headed to the middle frame.
“Quite frankly, it was a strange period, the way some of the goals went in and the type of challenges both ways,” Los Angeles coach Todd McLellan said of the first. “But, to come out of a strange period like that up two goals on the road, we’ll take it. Some of the goals weren’t pretty, but they all count at the end of the night. Then, I think, as the game went on, still made mistakes, but (goalie Cam Talbot) was really good and started to lock it down.”
Cam Talbot made 29 saves in the win.
The opening frame started with a goal from Carl Grundstrom for a 1-0 lead to the Kings.
Connor Dewar scored to tie the 1-1.
“That’s hockey,” Dewar said. “We shouldn’t have to score five or six goals to win a game. We had our chances.”
The Wild then took a 2-1 lead on a marker from Kirill Kaprizov with eight minutes gone in the game.
LA tied the game at 15:46 on a strike by Vladislav Gavrikov.
“That was a fortunate bounce, just try to grab a shot and we found a rebound,” Gavrikov said.
Midway through the third period, LA’s Trevor Moore scored for a 5-2 advantage.
At 14:38 of the third, the Wild got that one back on a goal from Joel Eriksson Ek c for a 5-3 score, but the Kings added two more to seal it.
“Our power play has to be better in a game like that, right?” Minnesota coach Dean Evason said. “We needed them to score, obviously, tonight and we didn’t have a penalty kill. Our special teams could have made the difference here, and tonight they did not.”
Adrian Kempe scored at 17:41 for a 6-3 count, and Blake Lizotte added a shorthanded, empty-net goal for the 7-3 final at 18:52.
Marc-Andre Fleury made 20 saves in the Wild loss.
“A couple tough bounces, I thought,” Fleury said. “Bad scramble in front and then puck just came out of nowhere and then the guy kicked it. I was going to pass to them, and they just kept coming. I think on the last one in the third too I probably did a bad play. I try to rim it, but their guy picked it up and the scramble in front again. Other than that, I thought we stuck with it, I thought we were right there and definitely a tough loss.”
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