The sweep of the NHL from Thursday starts in St Paul where the Minnesota Wild swamped the Calgary Flames, 6-2.
Zach Parise scored a hat trick to lead the offense and give the Wild two big points in the standings race.
“Great players want to do great things all the time. Zach just has to stick with his 
identity, which he’s done a great job with,” Wild coach John Torchetti said. “I’ve seen it the last for our five games, and he didn’t get rewarded for it, but it all equals out. If he got three or four points tonight, it equals out for the last four games. Now we’ve got seven games left, and good things will happen for him. Just keep working, and stick to his identity, and good things will come.”
Jared Spurgeon had two goals and Nino Niederreiter also scored for the Wild.
Devan Dubnyk made 31 saves for the win.
The Wild are now three points up on the Colorado Avalanche who lost to the Philadelphia Flyers on Thursday.
“We know the importance of it,” Parise said. “We didn’t want to overlook tonight’s game and we did a good job of not doing that. Now we can start getting ready for that big one.”
Johnny Gaudreau and Jakub Nakladal were the Flames’ goal scorers.
Niklas Backstrom took the loss on 23 saves.
In Boston, the Bruins’ slide continued with a fifth straight loss, this time to the Florida Panthers.
Reilly Smith, Vincent Trocheck, Jonathan Huberdeau, and Jussi Jokinen scored for the Panthers.
“Yeah, it was good. They scored the first goal and you don’t really know,” Smith said. “It was nice to see us bounce back and be able to get two points tonight and kind of keep our foot on the pedal.”
Roberto Luongo made 34 saves in the win that pushed the Panthers back into first place in the Atlantic Division.
“It’s nice to have that rivalry, that both teams are competitive right now and jockeying for position,” Luongo said. “We’re going to enjoy tonight. Tomorrow we’re going to refocus and get ready.”
The Bruins’ skid now has them just one point up on the Detroit Red Wings who won on Thursday night.
“You worry about the next game, that’s what you do,” Bruins coach Claude Julien said. “Right now we’re not worrying about anything else. Panicking will certainly not help the situation, and again, we’re still in that playoff position. I keep saying we’re in control of our own destiny, so you know if you panic you’re not going to gain what you want to gain.”
Ryan Spooner was the lone goal scorer for the Bruins; Tuukka Rask made 32 saves
In San Jose, home ice is not kind to the Sharks. They lost Thursday, 6-3, to the Edmonton Oilers.
The Sharks got off to a fast start with two goals in the first but the Oilers rallied in the second period on goals from Lauri Korpikoski, Taylor Hall, Adam Clendening and Patrick Maroon for a 4-3 lead after 40 minutes.
“Disappointing, considering our first period,” Sharks coach Peter DeBoer said. “I really liked our first period, I thought we came ready to play. Controlled a lot of the game, the shots, chances. If the game had ended after 20 minutes I would have been pretty happy.
“Unfortunately you can’t play 20 minutes in this league and expect to win. For whatever reason, from that point on we stopped playing. To their credit, we knew they would push back. We didn’t respond. It’s a disappointing last 40 minutes. They were more desperate over the last 40 minutes. We weren’t good.”
Jordan Eberle scored in the third and Hall added a second goal into an empty net.
“I liked the response,” Oilers coach Todd said McLellan. “The message was we were getting outworked, outcompeted, outhustled. And not playing very smart. I just thought we were letting ourselves off the hook. We haven’t done that all year. We’ve been a competitive, scrappy team. We may not win as many games, but the effort’s always been there, and I thought we left ourselves off the hook in the first. Challenged them and they came out and responded well. A real good sign for us.”
James Reimer took the loss on 16 saves.
Tommy Wingels, Joe Pavelski and Patrick Marleau scored for the Sharks.
“Maybe we thought it was going to be easy and we were going to score a couple more goals, and we didn’t, then they tied the game,” Sharks defenseman Roman Polak said. “After that, it was just too many turnovers at the blue line. Just can’t play the game like that. They have good speed up front, good skill guys, and they took it to us.”
Cam Talbot made 22 saves for the win.
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