In St Paul on Wednesday afternoon, Mats Zuccarello scored a pair of power-play goals in a 5-2 win over the Arizona Coyotes.
Cam Talbot made 28 saves in the win.
“We had a line-match plan, and everybody seemed to be rolling and going well so we just literally rolled through the lines,” Minnesota coach Dean Evason said. “I haven’t had a chance to see what the minutes were, but my guess is they’re all pretty similar. … Everyone contributed. It was a real good team win.”
Phil Kessel and Jakob Chychrun were the Arizona strikers.
The Coyotes have gone cold, losing five in a row.
“We’ve got to win a game,” Coyotes head coach Rick Tocchet said. “We need to win a game just to get us feeling good about ourselves and just go from there. You can’t win five in a row, you’ve got to win one at a time and that’s what we have to do.”
Nick Bonino and Zach Parise added single markers for Minnesota.
“I think in the shortened season, we knew it’d be a sprint, but now it gets that much more tight,” Bonino said. “Every play matters, I think guys are probably watching the standings a bit more than they were a month ago or two months ago. … What do we have, five left against [St. Louis]? That can directly impact where we fall in the standings. They’re obviously of big importance here, the guys know that, and I think tonight was a good first step.”
Jared Spurgeon also scored for the Wild, making the scoring 5-1 at the time.
“I mean, we want to score every power play,” Zuccarello said. “It doesn’t matter what time of season it is, but obviously the season’s coming down to the stretch here, it’s important that we continue that and hopefully we can keep it going.”
Antti Raanta made 17 saves in his return to the Coyotes’ net.
“It’s always different,” Raanta said. “You never know how you’re going to feel when you come back from a little time off, but after those couple first bouncing pucks, you start to feel better. Overall, it was nice to get back playing, but the only thing that matters right now is to win and we didn’t get it, so it’s disappointment not for sure.”
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