Who needs Marc-Andre Fleury when Cam Talbot makes 28 saves on Monday night i a 3-0 shutout of the visiting Vegas Golden Knights.
“I knew I was playing today no matter what happened,” Talbot said. “[Wild general manager Bill Guerin has] been very good at communicating with me and letting me know what’s going on and keeping me in the loop, so I’ve got to give Billy a lot of credit. Those aren’t easy conversations to have with a guy, and when he goes out and makes a deal like that and goes all-in, it just kind of benefits the team, really.
“We had to come out here and know that he’s gone all-in for us, and we have to go all-in for him now. It’s just one of those things. I knew I was playing. I just stayed focused on my game. I know we’re going to be sharing the net here, so I just go out there and play my game when I’m in there and support him when he’s in there.”
Newly acquired Nicolas Deslauriers put the Wild up, 1-0 in the first period in his debut.
“It’s a line thing, it’s not just me,” Deslauriers said. “Great pass by [Duhaime] there. I think our line is something we can bring. It’s fun playing with those two guys. Jost is a fast, skilled, hard-working guy, and [Duhaime], playing against him, he’s a hard guy [who] can fly too. That’s a line goal, not me.”
Minnesota improved to 37-20-4.
“[Talbot] only cares about winning hockey games,” Minnesota coach Dean Evason said. “He doesn’t care about Cam Talbot, [he] cares about the team, and yeah [his play] was fantastic.”
The Golden Knights dropped to 34-27-4.
“I mean, we’re desperate right now, right?” Vegas’ Alex Pietrangelo said. “We know where we are in the standings. We know what we have to do to get in, through playoffs. I thought we did a good job coming out. Obviously, it wasn’t enough. Easy to say, you don’t win, but I think if you look at the effort a lot of guys put in, you can be proud of that. But you know, again, we’ve said that a lot. We’ve got to find a way to win hockey games.”
Minnesota gained some breathing room for Talbot when Matt Dumba pushed the lead to 2-0 5:46 gone in the third period.
“When everyone is clicking, we’re an unstoppable team and we’re bringing up some guys that just want to win,” Minnesota’s Marcus Foligno said. “That’s the mentality we have, just to do whatever it takes to win and bring in some character guys like the ones we’ve brought in. Now it’s time to go.”
The Wild’s Ryan Hartman added an empty-net goal for the 3-0 final.
Logan Thompson made 33 saves in the Vegas loss.
“Tough day on our group,” Golden Knights coach Peter DeBoer said. “We had guys arriving literally 15 minutes before warmups that flew from Henderson to help us here tonight, so it wasn’t an easy day. And we could have used some of those excuses and not put in the effort we did, but we did, and we battled hard for 60 minutes. There’s not a lot of moral victories this time of year because you need the points, but I was proud of our effort.
“Obviously we have to find a way to score some goals, so we’re going to need someone to stick a couple in the net in order to win.”
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