Wild cruise to 5-1 win over Kraken

In St Paul, Matt Boldy scored a natural hat trick over the second and third periods on Monday to help the Wild to a 5-1 win over the Seattle Kraken.Marc-Andre Fleury made 35 saves in the Wild win.

“Marc-Andre Fleury was absolutely outstanding to give us a chance to get our legs under us,” Minnesota coach Dean Evason said. “They play an offensive game. They go. They push the pace. They’ve got four lines that can score and get scoring chances. They did. We didn’t defend real well at the start, and ‘Flower’ was there for us, and then we gradually got better.

“Second period wasn’t that great either, but we did tighten up a little bit. We had some turnovers and silly plays in the first, but he was fantastic.”

Minnesota improved to 43-22-9.

“Same kid I was in February when things weren’t going in, so I think the more you just kind of stick with who you are and don’t change much, the better,” Boldy said.

Jaden Schwartz was the lone striker for Seattle, his goal came with 11 minutes gone in the third to break Fleury’s shutout bid and make the score, 5-1.

Minnesota took a 1-0 lead in the first period on a goal from Jake Middleton .

“We didn’t play that well in the first, so it was nice to get a quick one like that,” Middleton said. “I had the easy part of that whole shift. … ‘Spurge’ making a great pass, [Eriksson Ek] screening.”

The Kraken took a 1-0 lead in the first period on a goal from

“It was one of those nights where we weren’t rewarded for some of the good, hard work we did offensively,” Seattle coach Dave Hakstol said. “We made too many mistakes that ended up in the back of our net. It felt like we could keep pushing and find one, especially in the first half of the hockey game … and get ourselves right back into it, but that didn’t happen.”

Boldy hit for a double in the middle frame for the Wild to come out of the second with a 3-0 advantage.

“My linemates are playing great,” Boldy said. “Hopefully you guys are giving them a lot of credit. You look at some of those goals, just putting it on a tee for me. Great pass by [Johansson] on the first one. Then [Eriksson Ek] winning the face-off (on the second) and [Eriksson Ek] putting it on a tee again (for the third). Those guys are playing awesome.”

Boldy completed his hat trick with 50 seconds of fresh ice used in the third period.

“It didn’t feel like a 5-1 game,” Schwartz said. “It felt closer than that. They had a couple good shots, good power-play goal. I don’t know how many shots we had, maybe 35-40 shots. Just Fleury made some big, timely saves, and we just weren’t quite there for the second chances tonight.”

Ryan Hartman scored at 10:21 of the third for a 5-0 lead to the Wild.