The Minnesota Wild called a players-only meeting after they struggled at the start the season. In their first game since that meeting, the Wild earned a win and gained a sense of relief.
Zach Parise on Sunday scored the go-ahead goal midway through the third period as the Wild won their second game of the season, beating the Montreal Canadiens 4-3.
“It’s been a tough start for everybody,” Wild head coach Bruce Boudreau said. “I love seeing the emotion on the faces, especially when it’s good emotion.”
Photo: AP
Jason Zucker, Marcus Foligno and Brad Hunt also scored for Minnesota, who matched their highest goal total through eight games this season. The Wild also scored four goals in a 7-4 home loss to Pittsburgh.
Devan Dubnyk made 29 saves and earned his first win of the season.
Phillip Danault scored twice and Tomas Tatar added a goal for the Canadiens. Keith Kinkaid stopped 29 shots in his second game of the season.
Parise took a perfect pass from Zucker through traffic and sent a shot that beat Kinkaid, giving the Wild a 4-3 lead. The score came just over four minutes after Hunt tied the game on a power play.
“It was a really good play,” Parise said. “A lot of times it’s gotta start from your own end with a couple of good plays out of your zone, and that’s how that one started.”
The teams squared off for the second time in a four-day span. The Canadiens won the previous meeting 4-0.
Montreal could not hold on to two one-goal leads on Sunday.
“It kind of just came down to them finding a way to put one more in the net than we did in the third period, and they get two points,” Montreal forward Brendan Gallagher said. “We’ve got to go home and obviously correct that.”
The finest of Kinkaid’s saves came when he stopped Zucker midway through the second period. As he fell to the ice, Kinkaid gloved a shot by Zucker that would have tied the game.
“He was, by far, our best player tonight,” Montreal coach Claude Julien said of Kinkaid.
Elsewhere, the Canucks held on to edge the Rangers 3-2, the Capitals beat the Blackhawks 5-3, the Jets overcame the Oilers 1-0 in a shoot-out and the Flames defeated the Ducks 2-1.
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