In St Paul, Sidney Crosby scored twice, including once off the power play to lead the Pittsburgh Penguins to a 6-4 win over the Minnesota Wild on Thursday night.
“We got a good start,” Crosby said. “We didn’t have many shots, but I thought we controlled the play.”
Crosby had two assists for four points in the win.
Tristan Jarry made 19 saves in the win.
The Pens improved to 7-7.-3.
Crosby opened the scoring for a 1-0 lad, and Ryan Poehling pushed the advantage to 2-0.
Brandon Duhaime scored for the Wild to make it 2-1, and Joel Eriksson Ek scored the first of his two on the night to make it 2-2 12 seconds later.
The Pens’ Kris Letang (power play) hit for first goal of the season for a 3-2 lead, and Crosby pushed it to 4-2.
“I thought the 5-on-3 goal in the second period was a huge goal for our team, just a huge momentum boost for us,” Penguins coach Mike Sullivan said. “Those guys had been working hard at it and I was happy for them.
“There was a lot to like about the game. We still had some lapses in the game where we hurt ourselves, so to speak. We’ve got to continue to work at getting better at those circumstances. For a lot of the night, we really liked our game. Obviously, when you score that many goals it helps your chances.”
Brock McGinn scored for Pittsburgh after the Wild closed to within 4-3, to make it 5-3.
The Wild dropped to 7-8-2, and have lost three in a row.
“We’ve got a lot of new guys in the lineup and we have to find our identity and play the whole way 60 minutes and that’s how we have to win games,” the Wild’s Marcus Foligno said. “We’ve got to win games 2-1. It’s gonna be ugly. We don’t have the firepower that we thought we did. … We need guys to step up. I just feel like we’ve got to find our identity of becoming [a team] that wins tight games.”
Jake Guentzel scored into an empty-net in the third period to make the score 6-3 for the Pens.
“Two points on the road,” Guentzel said. “It’s good to get two points. Some things to clean up, but a tough team to play against tonight, so it’s good to get two points.”
Minnesota’s Matt Dumba added a so what goal with eight seconds left in the game for the 6-4 final.
“Obviously, we’re not scoring enough goals,” Minnesota coach Dean Evason said. “You can look at four, but we had opportunities, probably, to score earlier and didn’t. First period we’re down. We actually played a good period, but we battled. We clawed. We got back in the game and obviously, we didn’t do enough as a group to get it done.”
Filip Gustavsson made 25 saves in the Wild loss.
“Playing in the NHL is not easy. It’s not going to come easy,” Gustavsson said. “We need to work way harder than we are right now and find a way to win. It’s more fun to win. Everyone hates losing. We’ve got to stop doing it.”
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