St. Paul, MN (SportsNetwork.com) – Ryan Suter tallied a goal and an assist as
the Minnesota Wild cruised to their sixth straight win with a 5-3 decision
over the Vancouver Canucks on Monday.
Jason Pominville, Kyle Brodziak, Nino Niederreiter and Jordan Schroeder all
scored, Mikko Koivu supplied three assists and Devan Dubnyk made 22 saves for
the Wild, who improved to 8-1-1 over their last 10 games.
“We were winning battles and did the little things right,” said Koivu. “We
have to continue to keep building.”
Zack Kassian and Shawn Matthias each scored for a second straight game and
Ryan Stanton also lit the lamp for Vancouver, which was coming off a 5-0 win
over Pittsburgh on Saturday.
“We came out hard, couldn’t finish, took too many penalties and couldn’t kill
them,” Canucks forward Henrik Sedin said. “We can’t play this way.”
Ryan Miller, who was coming off a perfect 31-save performance against the
Penguins, allowed five goals on 18 shots through almost 28 minutes of action.
Eddie Lack stopped all 14 shots fired his way in relief.
Minnesota opened the scoring after Schroeder took Jason Zucker’s feed across
the slot, raced in on net and backhanded a shot past Miller’s blocker 5:05
into the game.
Pominville added another quick strike for the Wild as he beat Miller with a
snap shot on the power play at 7:37.
Kassian answered back for the Canucks by skating down the right wing and
firing a shot off the far post and into the net for a 2-1 game midway through
the frame.
Niederreiter took Koivu’s slick feed from the left circle and one-timed it
from the slot to give Minnesota its two-goal lead back with 4:23 left in the
opening stanza.
The Canucks again got within a goal as Radim Vrbata knocked down Dan Hamhuis’
shot from the point and slipped the puck through the crease to Matthias, who
scored on an open net 1:11 into the second.
Minnesota used two quick goals to take a 5-2 lead in the middle frame. Suter’s
heavy slapshot found twine on the power play at 7:05 and Brodziak one-timed
Jared Spurgeon’s touch pass from the right circle 54 seconds later to chase
Miller from the game.
Stanton redirected Sedin’s left-circle blast past Dubnyk for a short-handed
goal to account for the final score with 2:03 left in regulation.
Game Notes
Dubnyk improved to 8-1-0 since being acquired from Edmonton on Jan. 14 … The
Wild are now 21-5-3 when scoring first this season … Minnesota has outshot
opponents in 13 of its last 15 games … Canucks forward Nick Bonino left
the game with a lower-body injury, while Wild forwards Ryan Carter and Zucker
also left the game due to injury … The two teams will conclude the season
series on Feb. 16 in Vancouver.
