There was a particular sequence on Thursday night at Grand Casino Arena during which superstar defenseman Quinn Hughes put on a passing clinic with the rest of his teammates on the ice.<\/p>\n
The puck glided from tape to tape with pinpoint precision as the Wild completely dominated possession. It felt like only a matter of time before they scored.<\/p>\n
Not once did the Wild even scare the net. It started to feel like there was a literal forcefield surrounding whichever net the Wild were shooting on as they too often looked for the perfect play in the offensive zone.<\/p>\n
At least the Wild made the most of their limited chances and eventually pulled away for good in a 4-1 win over the Flames. They got goals from center Danila Yurov and wingers Vinnie Hinostroza, Matt Boldy and Kirill Kaprizov, which proved to be enough for goaltender Filip Gustavsson, who carried his teammates for most of the game with 26 saves.<\/p>\n
Asked about escaping with a win, head coach John Hynes replied, \u201cI would say the difference in the game was strong goaltender, good special teams, and opportunistic scoring.\u201d That was pretty accurate given the way the Wild let the Flames hang around for most of the game.<\/p>\n
In the opening minutes, the Wild went up 1-0 when Yurov hammered home a beautiful backhand pass from winger Vladimir Tarasenko.<\/p>\n
Not long after that, the Wild stretched their lead to 2-0 when defenseman Jake Middleton flipped an outlet pass to Hinostroza, who caught the puck in midair, placed it on the ice, then went top shelf to make it 2-0.<\/p>\n
It seemed like the Wild put it in neutral the rest of the way.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think we played our best hockey,\u201d Hinostroza said. \u201cI think everybody felt the same way. They were kind of dominating. We got two nice goal and then I don\u2019t know if we thought it was going to be easy or what.\u201d<\/p>\n
Though the Flames briefly cut the deficit to 2-1 in the final frame, the Wild pulled away down the stretch.<\/p>\n
On a power play late in the game, Boldy finished off another passing display from Hughes and Kaprizov to make it 3-1. Naturally, Kaprizov netted an empty netter on the next shift to finalize the score at 4-1.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou go through 82 games and they\u2019re not all going to be Picassos, right?\u201d Hynes said. \u201cWe were able to find a way to finish. I think that is a good sign. But I think we all know it wasn\u2019t our best.\u201d<\/p>\n
It seemed like pretty much everybody in the locker room agreed with that assessment.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe grinded it out there in the end,\u201d Gustavsson said. \u201cWe\u2019ll sleep on it and get better for the next game.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There was a particular sequence on Thursday night at Grand Casino Arena during which superstar defenseman Quinn Hughes…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":435806,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5118],"tags":[535,5,537,161,38,5280,4,43,162],"class_list":{"0":"post-435805","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-minnesota-wild","8":"tag-filip-gustavsson","9":"tag-hockey","10":"tag-kirill-kaprizov","11":"tag-minnesota","12":"tag-minnesota-wild","13":"tag-minnesotawild","14":"tag-nhl","15":"tag-sports","16":"tag-wild"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/115982826520049618","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435805","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=435805"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435805\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/435806"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=435805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=435805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=435805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}