Don’t look now, but the Minnesota Wild are the hottest team in the National Hockey League. The Wild continue to impress as they punished the Edmonton Oilers 5-2 Saturday, recording their seventh consecutive victory.
The Wild are in the same division with high-flying Colorado Avalanche and the talented Dallas Stars, and they appear to be in the process of chasing down both teams. The big move came last week when they acquired high-scoring defenseman Quinn Hughes in a trade with the Vancouver Canucks. General manager Bill Guerin has indicated that additional moves that strengthen the Wild are likely.
Prior to Saturday’s game against the Oilers, the Wild activated defensemen Jonas Brodin and Jacob Middleton as well as forwards Mats Zuccarello and Vinnie Hinostroza. Bringing back those four players clearly gave the Wild more depth and strength, and they had no problems against Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl and the Oilers.
The return of Brodin was a huge move, because he is always instrumental in the team’s defense when the Wild are facing the Oilers. Brodin has done a solid job of slowing down McDavid in most of Minnesota’s games against Edmonton.
Wild holds McDavid to 1 goal
Keeping McDavid in check was a big part of the game plan against the Oilers. McDavid scored a goal at the 18:44 mark of the first period and that allowed the Oilers to tie the score at 2-2. However, Minnesota’s defense prevented the Oilers captain from putting any more points on the board after that marker.
Ryan Hartman followed McDavid’s tying goal with a tiebreaker at the 19:52 mark of the opening period. Neither team was able to score in the second period, but Vladimir Tarasenko gave the Wild a two-goal cushion when he scored on a rebound at the 9:08 mark of the third period.
Matt Boldy had scored a pair of goals in the first period and Nico Sturm closed out the scoring with an empty net slam dunk off a pass from Tarasenko late in the third period.