In St Paul, the Minnesota Wild’s Cam Talbot made 37 saves in a 2-0 shutout of the St Louis Blues on Thursday night.
The win was the 11th straight for the Wild on home ice.
“Anytime there’s a back-to-back, and like you said, 10 games in 18 days, you’re trying to do everything you can to swallow up rebounds and put the puck in good places so there aren’t those second opportunities,” Talbot said. “If I did leave some laying out there, the guys did a really good job of whacking it out of harm’s way for me tonight. So another gritty win for us, and we’ll take the two points.”
Marcus Johansson and Kirill Kaprizov scored in the middle frame.
“We didn’t have the A-game or the best game here tonight,” Wildhead coach Dean Evason said, “but we had the best result.”
St Louis dropped to 16-12-5.
“We had chances, we had shots, we had traffic at the net the majority of the time, and sometimes you don’t get the bounces,” the Blue’s Brayden Schenn said. “When you’re pressing and you’re pushing and you want to win so bad, sometimes it doesn’t go your way. But if we keep playing like that and playing together and playing hard, limiting teams’ chances, you’re going to come out on top most of the time.”
Minnesota improved to 21-10-1.
“If anyone, [Fiala] can make those plays,” Johansson said. “[Fiala] had a lot of time, so once I saw that, I just tried to find an area, and [he] made a great play.”
The Blues are 2-4-3 in their last nine.
Jordan Binnington made nine saves. in the loss.
“It was a great shot, but [Binnington] would probably want that back, for sure,” Blues head coach Craig Berube said. “… Listen, I’m not going to harp on the two goals-against. We did plenty to score enough goals, we just didn’t score. If we play hockey like that, we’re going to win a lot of hockey games.”
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