In the three-game sweep of the NHL from Thursday night we start in Washington, DC where the Minnesota Wild improved to 15-2-1 since the All-Star break with a 2-1 win over the Capitals.
“I give our guys a lot of credit for not getting frustrated over the course of the game,” Wild coach Mike Yeo said. “We had the right mindset as far as how we were defending. We knew that we had to defend well this game. This is not the type of game where you could expect to go out and score four or five goals. Because of that, to give yourselves a chance, you’ve got to get be real strong defensively, and I appreciate the way our guys stuck with it.”
Jason Pominville scored twice in the third period on outstanding individual efforts to erase a 1-0 Caps lead.
“We’re a confident group,” Pominville said. “We’re playing well. We’re doing a lot of good things. We’re getting great goaltending when we need it. You can tell we’ve improved our road record, and a big part of that is goaltending and confidence.”
Devan Dubnyk made 24 saves, and is now 17-3-1 since coming over from the Arizona Coyotes.
“I actually liked our game through two periods,” Yeo said. “I just said if we can stay with this then we’re going to give ourselves a great chance. We had to make sure that we didn’t open up and start to cheat and start to press offensively, because obviously if they get another one we’re digging ourselves an extremely deep hole. But I liked a lot of things we were doing.”
Braden Holtby made 28 saves in the loss.
The Wild are a long way away from the practice session Yeo broke down in an outburst to his team.
In Glendale, the Arizona Coyotes wore their original jerseys for throw-back Thursday and managed to break their losing streak with a 3-2 shootout win over the Vancouver Canucks.
“Winning is fun,” Arizona coach Dave Tippett said. “If you’re miserable winning, then you’re just miserable all the time.”
The Coyotes had built a 2-0 lead but Radim Vrbata and Chris Higgins scored late to force overtime.
Vrbata scored on a wrister where he seemed to almost stop on the ice before scoring to force extra time. It was his first game back in Arizona since signing with Vancouver in the off season.
“Everyone was waiting for that, so I figured I would do something else,” said Vrbata, who received a long and loud ovation after a video tribute early in the game. “It almost worked. Especially against Smitty, I had to be patient and go with something different.
“The video was very cool. Thank you to the (Coyotes) organization. I wasn’t expecting it, and the fans were so nice to me.”
In Boston, both the Bruins and Calgary Flames were looking for two points but as happens so frequently it seems, both teams came away with points and in this case the Flames picked up the extra point in a 4-3 shootout win.
Newly acquired, via waivers, David Schlemko scored in the eighth-round of the skills competition to give the Flames the win.
“Well, like unbelievable, like you know, battles, like the Bruins deserve lots of credit too,” Flames coach Bob Hartley said. “I think that the fans saw quite a game. Up and down that third period, like, was like a pingpong game. It was back and forth. The teams were going for it. We understand the importance of the two points and it was two teams that were very desperate.”
Calgary’s Kris Russell was credited with 15 of the club’s 37 blocked shots on the night.
“You don’t really think about it, you just go out and play and try to get in front of as many as you can,” Russell said. “Sometimes they just seem to hit you, but I think as a team we did a pretty good job of getting in the lanes and taking away their second and third opportunities.”
Leaving it all on the ice was evident throughout the game for the Flames.
With the Bruins being chased by the Florida Panthers for the final playoff spot in the east, it was tough loss of the game and that invaluable extra point.
“It’s a little bit of maybe confidence, and you squeeze your stick you’re trying so hard,” Bruins coach Claude Julien said. “There’s a lot of guys, use Carl Soderberg as an example. He’s really struggled the last little while scoring goals, and guys are putting pressure on themselves. There’s games where you like your team’s game, but your finish is what ends up killing you at the end.”
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