In St Paul, Kevin Fiala picked up a hat trick in an 8-3 Minnesota Wild win over the visiting Colorado Avalanche on Wednesday night.
“The score is one thing, but how we played was another,” Minnesota head coach Dean Evason said. “We were engaged right from the start, every guy. We were physical. We were on our toes. We played aggressively, maybe a little bit too aggressively at the start, taking those penalties, because their power play scares the heck out of us.”
Cam Talbot made 29 saves to get the win.
Kirill Kaprizov added two goals for the Wild.
“It was a huge game for us,” Fiala said. “We really came at this game and we wanted to just win the game, you know, and yeah, maybe [make a] statement and show them we can play against you guys if we’re going to meet them in the playoffs.”
Andre Burakovsky, Nathan MacKinnon and Mikko Rantanen were the Avs’ strikers.
Fiala, Kaprizov and Luke Johnson gave the Wild a 3-0 lead.
MacKinnon cut it to 3-1.
“You don’t want to blow it out of proportion, but you’re not just going to let it go either,” the Avs;Â Gabriel Landeskog said. “I think every single guy in that locker room hates losing. Some of us hate losing more than we like winning. That’s just the way it is. It doesn’t matter how many games you win in a row or where you’re at in the standings, it’s still a loss.
“But good teams learn from that and good teams move on from these type of games and these losses, and that’s what we’re going to do.”
Ryan Hartman pushed the lead back to three at 4-1 before the Avs scored twice to make it 4-3.
“We knew we wanted to leave off on a note to show that we can play against any team,” Hartman said. “We played tonight how we have to play against a team like that.”
Joel Eriksson Ek added a single marker to make the 7-3 before Fiala finished off his hat trick for the 8-3 final.
Philipp Grubauer got the start for the Avs and surrendered seven goals on 18 shots that he faced. He was given the hook early in the third period.
“We let it slip away,” Colorado head coach Jared Bednar said. “We got worse as the game went on. … Again, I’m really proud of the way our team has played and the way we responded at different points of the year, and we’ve been able to sustain a high level of play and tonight was uncharacteristic of our group. It was disappointing, but at some point [the point streak] had to come to an end.
“I don’t like losing, No. 1, and I don’t like the way that we lost tonight. We have to sort of take a look in the mirror from myself all the way through. It just wasn’t good enough and we have to come out and learn from that and not make that mistake again.”
Jonas Johansson faced only one shot and yielded a goal ober the last 12 plus minutes of the game.
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