In St Paul, Mats Zuccarello and Frederick Gaudreau struck for goals in the skills competition on Saturday night to give the Wild a 3-2 win over the New Jersey Devils.
Filip Gustavsson made 27 saves in the Minnesota win.
“I’ve been on losing streaks before with previous teams, and the best way to do it was just try not to feel the pressure,” Gustavsson said. “Pressure is good in a way when you can deal with it. It makes you perform even better. And I think we showed up today and, again, like we created our own confidence.”
The win snapped a three game skid for the Wild as they improved to 28-20-4.
The Wild’s Ryan Hartman forced extra time, which solved noting, when he scored at 5:25 of the third period to tie the game, 2-2.
“Once you get to overtime, it’s like, OK we’ve worked, we did a lot of really good things,” Wild coach Dean Evason said. “We worked hard. Clearly you want the extra point, but the way we played that 60 minutes, it was pretty positive. But to get that extra point and get that extra reinforcement was important for us.”
After Minnesota scored in the first period for a 1-0 lead, Tomas Tatar hit for a double in the middle frame to give New Jersey a 2-1 lead after 40 minutes.
“They were desperate for points, they’re hunting for the playoffs, and we’re aware of it, so we just have to have a better start than we did,” Tatar said. “The point is huge. You’re coming down on a season and in important moments like this, every point is big, and we know it. Unfortunately, too bad we couldn’t grab two, but one, we’ll take it. We want to learn what we did wrong and be better next game.”
New Jersey dropped to 34-13-5.
“We need different personnel to score,” Devils coach Lindy Ruff said. “On a night like tonight, you got to find ways to put the puck in the back of the net.
“But Tatar’s game, he was in on some quality opportunities and took advantage of a couple nice plays and was around the front of the net.”
The Wild took the early lead when Joel Eriksson Ek hit for his 20th of the campaign at 5:52.
Vitek Vanecek made 22 saves in the New Jersey loss.
You must be logged in to post a comment.