DENVER — Frederick Gaudreau scored two short-handed targets, Filip Gustavsson stopped 39 pictures, and the Minnesota Wild beat the Colorado Avalanche 4-2 Wednesday night time.
Marcus Johansson and Sam Steel additionally scored for the Wild, who improved to 16-1-4 of their final 21 video games and moved three factors forward of Colorado and Dallas atop the Central Division.
Bowen Byram and Lars Eller scored for the Avalanche, who misplaced for simply the tenth time of their final 34 video games (24-7-3). Alexandar Georgiev completed with 25 saves.
Despite outshooting the Wild by a 44-29 margin, together with a 19-4 benefit within the third interval, the Avalanche struggled all through the night time to outmaneuver Gustavsson, who leads the NHL in save proportion and targets towards common since Nov. 19.
“It’s so much fun being back there and having that pressure that you can make such a big difference,” Gustavsson mentioned. “I think that’s why I started playing goalie in the first place.”
The first three Minnesota targets got here after essential miscues by Colorado.
PHOTOS: Gaudreau scores two SHGs, Wild beat Avalanche 4-2
An errant cross from Georgiev from behind his personal internet arrange Johansson’s purpose simply 3:24 into the primary interval. After Byram tied it halfway by way of the opening interval, a battle for a misplaced puck in entrance of the Colorado internet resulted in a backhanded purpose from Steel with about 4 minutes left within the interval. Gaudreau scored simply 14 seconds right into a Colorado energy play at 9:10 of the second interval to push the Wild‘s result in 3-1.
“It’s a game of mistakes,” Avalanche coach Jared Bednar mentioned. “We made some big ones. We didn’t make a lot of them, but we made some big ones and they capitalized on them. That turns out for me to be the difference in the hockey game.”
Eller scored to get the Avalanche inside one with 6:19 remaining within the third, however Gaudreau sealed the win with a short-handed empty-netter with 33 seconds remaining because the Wild improved to 30-0-2 when main after two durations.
“We knew coming in it would be a tough game,” Gaudreau mentioned. “The crowd was very loud. It was a fun game to play in. It feels good. The thing that feels the best is I think we did it the right way. We were focused for the whole game. It’s fun to get the result from an effort like that.”
Colorado had gained the earlier two conferences between the groups this season, each of which got here on the highway. The loss snapped a 12-game streak during which the Avalanche had at the least one power-play purpose, the franchise’s second-longest run because it moved to Denver in 1995.
“To start the game, they were more competitive than we were,” Bednar mentioned. “I felt like we had some passengers for the first period-plus. When you’re playing a game like this, a playoff-style game, you can’t have passengers.”
NOTES
RWs Brandon Duhaime (non-COVID sickness) and Ryan Reaves (upper-body damage) have been scratches for Minnesota. … Colorado introduced Wednesday that it signed Western Michigan senior Jason Polin to a one-year, entry-level contact for the 2023-24 season. Polin led all NCAA gamers in targets this season.
UP NEXT
Wild At Vegas on Saturday night time.
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