In St Paul, a three-goal second period from the Wild propelled them to a 5-3 win over the Edmonton Oilers on Thursday night.
Marc-Andre Fleury made 18 saves in the Wild win.
Kirill Kaprizov had a goal and three points in the win, he has a 10-game active point streak.
“I just tried to play my game. That’s it,” Kaprizov said. “Good the team won and everybody played hard, strong. [We didn’t] give up a lot of chances to Edmonton. We played good.”
Minnesota improved to 11-9-2.
“We need to win,” Wild coach Dean Evason said. “I don’t talk about it a lot, winning, but we need to win some games now. We need to put some games together. We need to have some separation now. We can’t just play a good game and then fall off and make some mistakes, turn pucks over and give teams an opportunity. We have to continue to do what we’re doing and what we did tonight to string wins together.”
Leon Draisaitl staked the Oilers to a 1-0 lead in the first period.
“I think [fatigue on the second half of back to backs] are excuses,” Oilers coach Jay Woodcroft said. “For me, we put ourselves in position to play a good game, and it was tight. Found ourselves down, but the team pushed as hard as it could all the way to the very last few seconds. Unfortunately, made too many errors and they ended up in the back of our net.”
The Oilers dropped to 13-11-0
Joel Eriksson Ek;s power play goal in the second period tied the game, 1-1, for the Wild.
“I think when we got the lead, what we did good today, we kept pushing,” Eriksson Ek said. “We didn’t sit back, and I think we kept playing and just really held on to the puck and didn’t give too much. It was important for us to keep going and didn’t sit back.”
Connor McDavid restored the lead, 2-1, for the Oilers.
“I think when you’re winning 2-1 halfway through the game, you’d like to see you get some points out of it,” McDavid said. “Give them credit. We made mistakes and they made us pay.”
The Wild replied with two goals, Kaprizov tied it, 2-2, off the power play, and Frederick Gaudreau gave the Wild a 3-2 advantage.
Minnesota took control of the game in the third when Sam Steel scored for a 4-2 lead, and Mats Zuccarello pushed the advantage to 5-2.
“All four lines can score for us,” Steel said. “You see it almost every night. Everybody’s contributing, so that’s huge for the team. We’re just hoping to sustain that.”
The Oilers’ Klim Kostin scored with four seconds left on the clock for the 5-3 final.
Jack Campbell made 25 saves in the Edmonton loss.
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