Wild snap skid, extend Sharks’ woes in 3-2 win

Two teams in search of wins matched up Tuesday night in St Paul.

The Minnesota Wild were the team to come away breathing a little easier after a 3-2 win over the San Jose Sharks.

Charlie Coyle had a goal in second period outburst – file photo by Lewis Bleiman

The win snapped a five-game skid the Wild had been riding.

“I thought our first period was really good,” Wild coach Bruce Boudreau said. “I don’t know if our first period was really good and they were coming off the tiredness and didn’t have their legs yet, but I was pretty happy with that and pretty happy with some efforts on the power play. They’re a good team, and you beat them three times [this season] that’s pretty good.”

The win leaves the Wild needing just two more points to clinch a playoff berth.

On the other side of the ice, the Sharks are now riding a four-game skid.

“To be honest, we’re not that concerned [about the losing streak],” San Jose’s Joe Pavelski said. “We’ve played games that are close games, a lot of these games are one-goal games. It’s such a fine line of being on the winning side or losing side that I think we all understand that we can be a little bit better.”

With the Wild leading 1-0 in the middle frame, the two teams combined for four goals in 63 seconds.

The Sharks’ David Schlemko knotted the game at 17:57 of the period followed by Martin Hanzal giving the Wild a short-lived 2-1 lead.

That goal was followed by a Charlie Coyle strike to make it 3-1 and Patrick Marleau scored to get the Sharks to a 3-2 deficit 63 seconds after the mayhem started.

“Things happen like that and it becomes crazy,” Boudreau said. “We would’ve liked to go in with a 3-1 lead, but we wanted to make sure that we went in with a lead. We are pretty good when we’ve got a lead in the third period.”

The win helped the Wild close to within six points of the Chicago Blackhawks who lost in overtime Tuesday.

“I think the last three games, we played pretty well and didn’t get the results we wanted. I thought, outside of that first period in [a 5-4 loss at the Winnipeg Jets on Sunday], we’ve been playing pretty good hockey, just not ending up in the win column, so it was nice to end up on that side tonight. I think we were going in the right direction, just [had] nothing to show for it,” Zach Parise said after snapping the streak.

Devan Dubnyk made 21 saves to get the win for Minnesota who improved to 44-22-6.