In St Paul the Minnesota Wild outscored Dylan Coghlan of the Vegas Golden Knights, 4-3, on Wednesday night.
The three goals were also his first three career NHL goals.
Kaapo Kahkonen made 24 saves, just enough, to help the Wild accomplish that task.
“It’s been a fun time and winning is always fun,” Kahkonen said. “Right now, it’s tough to think what to think about the stretch, other than it’s been fun. That’s kind of my answer.”
Coghlan completed his hat trick with under three minutes left in the game, into an empty net.
“I wish we could’ve got the win, that would have been the icing on the cake,” Coghlan said. “But I felt pretty good. As a team, I thought we made some mistakes. I thought I made a couple mistakes too.
“Takeaway from this, my first goal and I was lucky enough to get two more after that, so it is definitely a night I’ll remember for the rest of my life.”
Joel Eriksson Ek struck for two goals for Minnesota.
“The whole group played great. Every guy,” Wild coach Dean Evason said. “We competed our butts off. The score, it’s unfortunate, but obviously it’s a win, so it doesn’t matter what the score is. It’s more like a 4-1 hockey game with the things we did correctly.”
The Wild improved to 15-8-1.
“It’s a 1-1 game going into the third period,” Golden Knights head coach Peter DeBoer said. “We still have a chance to win and get points. …The disappointing part for me is, it’s still a winnable game going into the third with 20 minutes to play, and we didn’t bring it in the third.”
Kirill Kaprizov scored off the power-play for the Wild, when he gave them a 2-1 lead in the third period.
“We got the lead there in the third, but they pushed back hard,” Kahkonen said. “It’s just what it’s going to be in a season like this, especially when there’s so many games (in a condensed schedule), it’s just a grind sometimes and you got to find a way to win different ways. I think good teams do that, and I think we’re a really good team, and if we just keep doing the right things, we’re going to be successful.”
Vegas dropped to 16-6-1.
“We didn’t break the puck out well, we didn’t transition the puck well,” Vegas’ Mark Stone said. “We didn’t make proper plays in the [offensive] zone. We just didn’t get any sustained zone time. To be honest, our execution was trash.”
Marc-Andre Fleury made 25 saves in the loss.
Vegas played without Alex Pietrangelo, who is out for the “foreseeable” future according to his coach.
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