With the Minnesota Wild in a fight for the top spot in the Central Division, Eric Staal struck for two goals to lead the Wild to a 3-1 win over the San Jose Sharks.
“This was the way we were playing when we were in our [12-game winning] streak and we got away from it a little bit,” Wild coach Bruce Boudreau said. “That’s two one-goal games in a row, and hopefully we can continue that.”
Devan Dubnyk made 20 saves for win over Sharks – file photo by Lewis Bleiman
Devan Dubnyk made 20 saves for the win as the Wild improved to 42-15-6.
Zach Parise returned from a case of the mumps and scored a power play marker to give Minnesota 1-0 lead.
“We’re going to see a lot more of those type of games,” Parise said. “… It’s going to be a fight to get in the zone, to get possession, to get zone time. I think we’re going to see a lot more of that going forward. We have to know how to win those. We have to prepare ourselves to play in those type of games.”
Melker Karlsson was the lone goal scorer for the Sharks.
“There wasn’t much space out there. We had our power plays, we didn’t get a lot done and we had some chances. Our penalty kill was real solid,” the Sharks’ Joe Pavelski said. “We gave ourselves a chance to win and we just got caught making a few too many plays. With their structure that they have, you’ve got to just stay patient, keep laying it in, forechecking and better break something open that way. If you do that, hopefully you can get a few more pucks to the net and you need that kind of traffic around there.”
WATCH: All Sharks vs. Wild highlights
Martin Jones made 25 saves for the loss as the Sharks dropped to 38-19-7.
“It was a hard-fought game,” Sharks head coach Pete DeBoer said. “We knew it would be a tough game in here. They came as advertised, they’re very good, and we were not as good as them. So it was the proper result.”
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