In St Paul, Cam Talbot made 19 saves and the Minnesota Wild rebounded from blowing a two-goal lead in the third period to defeat the Anaheim Ducks, 4-3, on Saturday night.
Victor Rask scored with 2:46 gone in the extra session.
“We took care of business this weekend, gave ourselves a chance at home ice in the playoffs, and then see where the chips fall with Colorado’s games moving forward,” Minnesota’s Nick Bonino said. “But we’ll just try to handle what we can and see if we have home ice, that’s something we’d really like.”
Rickard Rakell scored in the first period for a 1-0 Ducks lead.
Jared Spurgeon and Ryan Hartman put the Wild up 2-1 after the Ducks had taken a 1-0 lead in the opening frame.
“I thought he was going to look me off a couple more times,” Spurgeon said. “He’s so deceptive with the puck and obviously he’s a threat to shoot at any time, so it makes the goalie honor him, too. I think on both our goals he made great passes.”
Bonino pushed the lead to 3-1 before the end of the second period.
Trevor Zegras and Max Comtois scored in the third period to make the extra session necessary.
“When we were close to .500 for the first 10 or 12 games, I was quietly worried about where we were going because I wasn’t sure we were going to be able to make the necessary steps with our younger guys,” Ducks head coach Dallas Eakins said. “Here we are now, our record is worse, but I’ve never been more encouraged or excited about our future. The other thing that happened is we got our feet underneath us down the stretch. We got our guys into certain roles that they were comfortable with. I think the guys really started playing hard for each other. The last few games we’re playing against very, very good teams and you can see we’re right there and we just have to take that next step.”
Ryan Miller, who iced his final game, made 21 saves in the loss.
“It was a fun game,” Miller said. “Happy with the way we settled back in the third period. It’s good to compete to the end.
“I want to say goodbye, and I think it’s going to help moving forward for sure. It was a lot of fun.”
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