ST. PAUL, Minn. — Kirill Kaprizov scored twice for the Minnesota Wild in a 4-1 win against the Montreal Canadiens at Xcel Energy Center on Tuesday.
Matt Boldy had a goal and an assist, Joel Eriksson Ek had two assists, and Marc-Andre Fleury made 34 saves for the Wild (5-4-1), who have won two in a row and are 5-1-1 in their past seven games.
“A few in a row I feel like you get your momentum a bit,” Fleury said. “The confidence has been going all right. I felt good tonight.”
Nick Suzuki scored for the Canadiens (5-5-0), who had won two straight. Jake Allen made 27 saves.
“We were confident with our first two periods,” Suzuki said. “I felt like we outplayed (them) for almost the whole game. Tough result for us, but I think the process is still really good.”
Mason Shaw scored for the second straight game to give Minnesota a 1-0 lead at 1:09 of the second period. He scored five-hole with one hand on his stick after Allen gave up a soft rebound on Eriksson Ek’s shot.
Kaprizov increased the lead 2-0 at 3:29, redirecting a centering pass from Boldy on the power play.
Video: MTL@MIN: Kaprizov deflects a PPG into the top of the net
Kaprizov then made it 3-0 at 14:55 on a 2-on-1 Marco Rossi. Canadiens defenseman David Savard Dove to break up Kaprizov’s initial pass, and as the puck was coming down, Rossi batted it on the net, where Kaprizov poked in the rebound.
Montreal coach Martin St. Louis challenged the play for a missed game stoppage, but a video review determined that Rossi’s stick made contact with the puck at or below the normal height of his shoulders.
“I was just praying (it wasn’t a high stick),” said Rossi, whose assist was his first NHL point. “I mean, the first eight games I had no points, so maybe you’re thinking about that too much sometimes. Of course, you try to play the right way, but as a forward, of course, it’s kind of frustrating when you don’t have points. But for me, it was important to play the right way and just continue like that, because I knew it’s going to come sooner or later. So yeah, I’m really glad to have that first point.”
Suzuki cut it to 3-1 at 13:30 of the third period, one-timed from a pass Kirby Dach on the power play.
Boldy shot into an empty net at 16:52 for the 4-1 final.
“I’m very pleased to see what the boys are doing,” St. Louis said. “It would have been nice to get one back before the end of the second, but I liked our third. We got one on the PP. We pulled the goalie with 3:30 left with a TV timeout, and I still had my timeout. I still don’t feel like we’re out of it. I feel like we’re coming. I think the whole group feels that way. I think we trust in the brand that we’re trying to play. We don’t have to cheat. We’re going to generate chances, and it showed in the past that we’re able to crawl back in games, and tonight we just fell short.
“That’s one thing I don’t like about tonight’s game is the result, because there were a lot of good things in this game.”
Video: MTL@MIN: Kaprizov swipes in puck for second goal
Wild forward Brandon Duhaime left during the second period with an upper-body injury. “It’s not positive,” said Coach Dean Evason postgame.
It’s the latest injury at forward for Minnesota, which is already without Jordan Greenway (upper body), Marcus Foligno (upper body) and Ryan Hartman (upper body).
“It’s not tough. It’s exciting because you get to put people in opportunities to be successful,” Evason said of the need for young players to step up. “They all want to play, so you get an opportunity to place a guy in a spot that he wants and he’s hungry for. Clearly, we don’t want injuries. We’d like to have everybody healthy, but it happens. It’s a physical game, so it’s going to happen. Yeah, it’s exciting for us as an organization to see the progress, the development and the depth of our organization.”
.