In St Paul Sunday, Devan Dubnyk made 30 saves to help the Minnesota Wild maintain their lead for second place in the Central Division.
The Wild upended the Colorado Avalanche, 5-2 to keep pace with the St Louis Blues.
“I thought it was a great response to [our] last game [3-0 loss at Nashville on Saturday] to come out like that no matter what the standings say,” Wild head coach Bruce Boudreau said. “I thought we started to run a little low on gas after that, but we had enough to hang on and [Dubnyk] played good to save us in the third period I thought.”
Martin Hanzal and Jared Spurgeon got the Minnesota offense going in the first period when they struck for goals just 28 seconds apart for a 2-0 lead.
Gabriel Landeskog broke through late in the opening frame to cut the lead in half but Erik Haula scored with just 20 seconds left in the frame to take the win out of the Avs’ sails to make it 3-1 Wild.
“That can’t happen. You get a big goal on the road to make it a one-goal game and you’ve got to just play solid defensively and that has to be a priority,” Landeskog said. “We didn’t have a very good start and we didn’t really have the jump we wanted to, but that 3-1 goal kind of deflates us a little bit.”
In the second, Zach Parise and Jordan Schroeder scored for Minnesota to make the score 5-1.
“To win a hockey game it can’t be just one thing good or whatever, it has to collectively be the whole team. Each area we’re trying to improve and get better, and I think we’ve done that for the most part for the last week,” the Wild’s MIkko Koivu said of the team effort.
Mikko Rantanen closed out the scoring in the game late in the middle frame to make it 5-2.
“We want to get that feeling of winning. That’s just a nice feeling to have when you go onto the ice and just expect to win,” Devan Dubnyk said. “We’ve had it for the entire season, and it slipped away for a few weeks. But if we can take the opportunity if nothing else to just get that feeling back this week of just knowing that when we go on the ice we’re going to win the hockey game, then that will be good to take into the playoffs.”
WATCH: All Avalanche vs. Wild highlights
Starting Avs goalie Calvin Pickard got the hook early in the second period; he was relieved by Jeremy Smith who stopped 13 shots in his stint.
“I didn’t think [Pickard] was very good tonight. We weren’t playing our best at the time and I didn’t think he was either,” Avs head coach Jared Bednar said. “I didn’t like our first period. We gave them some easy goals and you can’t give a team like the Wild easy goals. We did a decent job in the second and third periods, but we couldn’t climb out of the hole we dug ourselves in the first period.”
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