The sweep of the NHL from Thursday night starts in Buffalo, where the Minnesota WIld got a 38-save effort from Devan Dubnyk in a 4-0 win over the Sabres.
For Dubnyk, it was his second straight shutout win.
“It’s a nice feeling to finish the road trip that way and keep the good feeling in this rink,” Dubnyk said. “Unfortunately we only play here once a year but, I’ve said it before, this is a special place for me. It all began here with these guys so there will always be good memories.”
Wild rookie Joel Eriksson Ek had a goal to give Minnesota a 1-0 lead.
“He’s getting better every night,” Wild coach Bruce Boudreau said. “One of these days I’m going to put him on the power play. He’s done everything and more that we’ve asked of him so far.”
Jason Zucker, Ryan Suter and Mikko Koivu also scored for the Wild.
In San Jose, the Sharks got two goals from Tomas Hertl in a 3-1 win over the Columbus Blue Jackets.
Joonas Donskoi also scored for San Jose and Hertl added an empty-netter for his second of the night.
“We wanted some power-play goals, and the nice thing here is, building off last year, we want two units that can go out there and score,” Sharks coach Peter DeBoer said. “Right now, the 5-on-5 goals are hard to come by. We’re creating chances, but the power play won us the game tonight.”
Scott Hartnell was the lone scorer for the Jackets.
Martin Jones made 24 saves for the win.
“They scored a couple of power-play goals, and I thought we had a couple of really good chances on our first PP of the game,” Blue Jackets coach John Tortorella said. [Bobrovsky] makes a couple of great saves early on, but that last one hurt. It was just a rebound.”
Sergei Bobrovsky made 26 stops in the loss.
While the Montreal Canadiens remain the hottest team in the NHL, the Detroit Red Wings are holding on to the second hottest spot with their sixth straight win Thursday, 2-1, over the St Louis Blues.
It took an eight-round shootout before the Wings could claim victory on a goal from Henrik Zetterberg who beat Jake Allen.
Petr Mrazek got the win on 31 saves.
“A huge win on the road for us,” Mrazek said. “St. Louis is a very good team. The first period, we didn’t play how we wanted to play, but from that second half of the game, the better we were.”
Kevin Shattenkirk scored for the Blues to give them a 1-0 lead before Frans Nielsen scored shorthanded to tie it.
“I think this game is the same as four or five games we’ve played already,” Blues coach Ken Hitchcock said. “We played really well, had a lot of good stuff, but don’t finish. So I think we’ve got to look at everything right now. We’ve got to look at combinations, what’s working, what’s not working, what we need to get more from. Can’t just keep living on scoring chances and work. You’ve got to finish at the end of the day. I think we’ve got to look at every aspect right now.”
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