After a stretch of stinkers, where everyone seemed to have written off the Minnesota Wild this season, the club has reeled off 12 straight games with at least one standings point.
In San Jose on Saturday, the Wild handed the Sharks a 5-2 loss.
Marc-Andre Fleury made 35 saves in the Minnesota win.
“They obviously came out with a lot of jump and we didn’t handle it real well at the start,” Minnesota coach Dean Evason said. “‘Flower’ kept us in the hockey game, made some incredible saves to allow us to get our legs under us, and maybe more so our minds straight. When we started playing the way we’re supposed to play and know we can play, we got better and better.”
The Wild moved to 37-21-7.
Jared Spurgeon gave the Wild a 1-0 lead less than two minutes into the first period, but Logan Couture tied it, 1-1, at 10:19
“I thought the last five [minutes] of the second and then the third we played a lot better, got back to just being stingy,” Spurgeon said.
Minnesota is 10-0-2 in the 12-game streak.
With less than two minutes left in the first, Frederick Gaudreau hit off the power play to push the Wild into the lead, 2-1, where it stayed until the third period.
The Sharks dropped to 19-36-12.
“We played a good hockey game,” San Jose coach David Quinn said. “We were sniping from an offensive perspective; we had plenty of scoring chances. Fleury played great. And we’ve just been finding ways to lose. We’ve looked at it until we’re blue in the face and I don’t think we’ve played much differently at home than we have on the road.”
San Jose has lost of their nine matches.
“I think we’ve done a fairly good job here for the most part this season,” San Jose’s Erik Karlsson said. “I think it’s been tough the last few weeks. Hopefully we can just keep building on the things that we want to build on and move it forward.”
Marcus Johansson scored with just 30 seconds of fresh ice used in the third period for a 3-1 advantage to the Wild.
Mats Zuccarello and Matt Boldy (empty net) bookended a goal from Tomas Hertl in the third for the 5-2 final.
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James Reimer made 24 saves in the Sharks loss.
“I thought a lot of guys had good nights, and it’s disappointing to get the result we got,” Quinn said.
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