In St Paul Monday night, the deep exhale heard was the Minnesota Wild punching their ticket for the playoffs in a 3-0 win over the Edmonton Oilers.
“With (the) St. Louis (Blues) losing and St. Louis plays (the) Colorado (Avalanche), I don’t know how all this math works out. I just wake up in the morning and just hope to see an ‘x’ by the name,” Wild head coach Bruce Boudreau said after the game.
Devan Dubnyk made 22 saves to get the shutout.
“To be able to go out there and not give up any goals against as a group, that’s certainly a good confidence boost to start,” Dubnyk said. “If there’s only a couple of games left, you want to win the games you can and we started with that tonight and we’ll see what happens.”
Zach Parise struck twice for the Wild as they improved to 44-25-10 and clinched with the win and the Colorado Avalanche’s loss in Los Angeles.
“We spent more time on our end. You’ve got to give (the Wild) credit; they smelt blood and went after it,” Oilers head coach Todd McLellan said. “We played a lot below our goal line and anytime we did get the puck, we were out of gas to jump into the play to make anything happen. So give them credit; they found a weak point and they went after it.”
Joel Eriksson Ek added an empty net goal late to seal the win for the Wild.
“It’s going to be just as important to build our game going into the playoffs, so it’s not like you’re going to taking any sort of break regardless of what happens,” Dubnyk said.
[WATCH:Â All Oilers vs. Wild highlights]
Cam Talbot made 37 saves in taking the loss.
“They know there’s a finish line. The finish line is non-rewarding. You fall behind, you feel like you don’t get a break, you miss a net or something like that, it takes a little bit more out of you. We should be more resilient; we’re not right now, but we’re going home, we’ve got to push hard for two (more games),” McLellan said of the season winding down.
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