On Thursday night in St Paul, Kaapo Kahkonen made 32 saves and the Minnesota Wild defeated the Los Angeles Kings, 5-2.
The Wild took a 3-0 lead on strength of goals from Marcus Johansson, Kevin Fiala and Kirill Kaprizov.
“We lost two in a row, we don’t want to lose three, so we all knew what we needed to do and right from the start played the right way,” Johansson said. “I feel like if we keep building off how we played 5-on-5 and how we started that game, it’s not going to be easy coming into this building.”
Dustin Brown broke through the Kings’ first goal and a 1-3 deficit.
“We didn’t play well in the first period,” Kings head coach Todd McLellan said. “That was pretty evident. I think the second and fifth goal for me, they’re so preventable. … Those are frustrating goals-against. They’re completely preventable. … You’re not even in a real stressful situation. You just make bad decisions. We’ve got to get that out of our game if we want to have any type of success.”
Drew Doughty got the Kings within 3-2 before Nick Bjugstad scored to give the Wild a 4-2 lead.
“They’re two really good players, two of our biggest defensemen on our team, so it [stinks] to lose them,” Doughty said.
Joel Eriksson Ek scored at 4:44 of the third to extend the Minnesota lead to 5-2.
“I think once we got out (of the second period), [leading] 4-2 on Bjugstad’s great goal, I think we felt pretty good there heading into the third,” the Wild’s Marcus Foligno said.
Alex Iafallo gave LA some life when he scored midway through the third period to make if 5-3, Minnesota.
“[The win is] a step in the right direction,” Johansson said. “It feels like it’s starting to get going a little bit and we have to build off that.”
Jonathan Quick made 23 saves in the loss.
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