Wild top Bruins for third straight win, sixth straight on home ice
Brandon Duhaime and the Wild quickly extinguished any early momentum the Boston Bruins had built Saturday night at Xcel Energy Center.
After Bruins winger David Pastrnak scored 2 minutes, 37 seconds into the first period on a power play, Wild winger Brandon Duhaime and Bruins center Jakub Lauko dropped the gloves, each earning five-minute majors after the tussle.
By coincidence or not, that seemed to shift all the momentum to the Wild, who beat the Bruins 3-2 for their third straight win and sixth straight victory on the Xcel Energy Center ice.
The Wild (15-13-4) scored the next three goals and outshot the Bruins (19-7-6), who were on the second half of a back to back, 35-21 on the night.
Joel Eriksson Ek knotted the game for the Wild, winning a battle in front of the net on the power play and poking the puck past Bruins goaltender Linus Ullmark 5 minutes, 57 seconds into the second period. It was his sixth power-play goal of the season.
Just 1 minute, 24 seconds later, Alex Goligoski delivered a nice feed to a streaking Kirill Kaprizov, who one-timed a shot past Ullmark to put the Wild up 2-1.
That remained the score until Pat Maroon delivered a perfect pass from behind the goal to Marcus Foligno, who fired a shot past Ullmark from the front of the net 3 minutes, 10 seconds into the third frame to put the Wild up 3-1.
Bruins center Morgan Geekie made things a little more interesting with his goal at 13:53, but the Wild controlled possession for most of the six remaining minutes to ice the game away.
Marc-Andre Fleury had 19 saves for the Wild. It was his 998th game and his 550th win.
