In St Paul, Matt Murray made 23 saves in his first career shut out, a 4-0 win for the visiting Dallas Stars over the Wild.
“Everything is great,” Murray said. “Obviously, playing in the NHL is one thing, it’s every kid’s dream, but to be able to get a shutout is on a level of its own. I’m ecstatic.”
Dallas improved to 23-11-5, snapping a three-game skid.
“I think we needed a good goaltending performance on the road,” Dallas coach Peter DeBoer said. “We lost a couple, and this is always a tough building to play in. Really, the first period was the game. They came out really hard. I thought they could have had two or three if [Murray] wasn’t ready to play. He was our best player by far in the first period.”
Roope Hintz scored a shorthanded goal midway through the first period to stake the tars to a 1-0 lead.
“It’s funny, I’ve scored three goals, two short-handed goals in Minnesota,” Hintz said. “So, it’s pretty nice. Obviously, we had a lot of chances, our line, but we’ve been struggling lately to bury one, and hopefully we will bounce from this, get a little more leg and get going.”
The score stayed that way until Tyler Seguin hit with 85 seconds gone in the third period for a 2-0 advantage to Dallas.
Minnesota dropped to 17-18-4 off their fifth loss in six games.
“Not good enough,” Wild forward Pat Maroon said. “Just got to be better. If you look at the game as a whole, they score a short-handed goal right out of the gates and we’re down 1-0. We give that one up in the third, I don’t know, maybe just bad reads, but got to find a way.”
The Wild were scoreless in six power play chances.
Radek Faksa made it 3-0 at 8:22 of the third with Dallas’ second shorthanded strike of the game.
Jason Robertson hit off the power play with 10 minutes gone in the third for a 4-0 final count on the scoreboard.
Marc-Andre Fleury made 16 saves in the loss.
“It just wasn’t a good night on the power play, and I think at the end of the day, we didn’t score a goal, and you’re not going to win games [like] that,” Wild coach John Hynes said. “But I think that was the biggest difference in the game.”
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