Talbot, Wild shut out Chicago

The game clock struck zeroes on Wednesday night in Chicago. The question is, when will the clock on the current roster of Blackhawks be turned on?

On Wednesday night, the Minnesota Wild cruised to a 5-0 win over Chicago,

Cam Talbot made 30 saves for the shutout.

“Shutouts are a team stat,” Talbot aid . “Wins are what are most important. It’s certainly nice to throw one of those (shutouts) up every once in a while, but I’ll take the win more often than not.”

Kevin Fiala had a goal and two points for the Wild; Mats Zuccarello hit for a goal and assist in the win.

“It’s very cool, to be honest,” Fiala said. “Good job by everybody to bring the focus here in the last game and just finishing off and then go into the (All-Star) break. I’m very proud of the team.”

Minnesota improved to 28-10-3.

“We liked our game tonight, for sure,” Wild head coach Dean Evason said. “We did a lot of really good things right from the start. We didn’t deviate through the whole game, so that was good to see, for sure. Yeah, we scored some nice goals, but we did a lot of really good things.

“Our concentration tonight was to get out of our zone because we had heard that they worked on their forecheck a lot (Tuesday). We knew they were going to come. We knew they were going to be aggressive. We didn’t want to spend any time in [the defensive zone]. Obviously, you don’t want to spend time there, but that was a real focus with our video and our chat, that we get out of our zone quickly, and we just felt good things could happen.”

After a scoreless first period, the Wild posted three goals in the middle frame.

“Did not see that coming,” Blackhawks head coach Derek King said. “Yeah, good thing we’re going on a break and we don’t have practices coming up for these guys. Yeah, frustrating, let’s put it that way. Just frustrating. Like I said, good practice, good morning skate, good meetings, I thought we had real good energy the first period. I thought we looked pretty good, started the game on time.

“The second period we just kind of, I don’t know what it is with our second periods. We stopped playing the way we were in the first and that’s a good hockey team. It’s the same story, right? When we’re struggling or fighting it, it’s the same conversations we have. I have to figure out a way to stop having these conversations with you guys.”

The Blackhawks dropped to 16-23-7.

Frederick Gaudreau, Zuccarello, and Kirill Kaprizov e were the second period strikers for Minnesota.

“Yeah, it’s tough,” the Blackhawks’ Alex DeBrincat said. “I thought we played a good first period, had some chances to score, just didn’t go in for us. And then a couple mistakes ends up 3-0 at the end of the second, so frustrating is the right word, but we’ve got to stick with it and limit the mistakes. They’re a good team, so they’re going to put it in the back of your net when you make mistakes.”

Fiala and Nico Sturm scored in the third period for the 5-0 final.