In St Paul, Kevin Fiala completed a wild rally for Minnesota on Saturday night, when he scored with 2:16 gone in an extra session.
“I just passed it out to [Fiala], and he gave it back to me pretty quick. I was just trying to get it on net,” Minnesota’s Josh Brodin said. “… It was huge for us to win that last game here. I think it gave us some confidence.
“It doesn’t matter if we clinched the playoffs already. The last games here, it’s going to be important to get the wins and get confidence going into the playoffs. Just have to keep working hard and hope we get more wins.”
Kaapo Kahkonen made 28 saves to get the victory.
Jordan Kyrou and Sammy Blais scored for St Louis to give them a 2-0 lead.
“We played a solid two periods, got a 3-1 lead, just go close it out,” Blues head coach Craig Berube said. “All you have to do is manage the game. Advance the puck, make sure you get it in deep, get line changes, and just make hard plays.”
Mats Zuccarello cut the lead to 2-1.
“We just kept grinding away and grinding away and ultimately found a way,” Wild head coach Dean Evason said. “If there’s an example, it’s this hockey club we just played. That’s what they do.”
David Peron upped the lead to 3-1 just past the midway point of the second period.
The wild rallied on a goal from the Nico Sturm to make it 2-1.
“We lost the two games, but for us, we realized that we could have won both games too,” Sturm said. “It’s not like we didn’t have a chance to win those games. And even today, it just speaks to the group. … It speaks to the guys in the locker room to just once more get the job done.
“This is the kind of game that we need to play in two weeks when playoffs roll around.”
Brodin made the extra session necessary when he tied the game, 3-3, with 60 seconds left on the game clock.
Jordan Binnington made 34 saves in the loss.
“We’ve just got to turn the page on this, be happy we got results the last several games,” Perron said. “We still got a point streak going and we got to keep pushing.”
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