Joel Eriksson Ek scored the winning goal with 4.4 seconds left to lift the Minnesota Wild past the Florida Panthers 3-2 on Thursday night. <\/p>\n
Marcus Foligno and Ryan Hartman also had goals for the Wild and Jesper Wallstedt made 18 saves.<\/p>\n
Minnesota, which is 3-4-1 in its last eight, entered Thursday’s game five points behind second-place Dallas and 12 points ahead of fourth-place Utah in the Central Division. The Panthers entered Thursday 12 points behind the Ottawa Senators for the second wild card in the Eastern Conference.<\/p>\n
Aaron Ekblad hammered a shot inside the left post to tie it for Florida with 1:13 left. But Eriksson Ek answered with the winner in the closing seconds of the third period.<\/p>\n
Foligno, in his first game back from a lower-body injury, scored his eighth goal of the season a couple minutes into the second period. It was also Foligno’s first time playing with his brother Nick, who was traded from Chicago to Minnesota at the trade deadline and he embraced his brother after the score.<\/p>\n
Matthew Tkachuk scored and assisted for the short-handed Panthers, who were down nine players, including leading scorer Sam Reinhart, Aleksander Barkov and Brad Marchand. Evan Rodrigues suffered an upper-body injury in the first and did not return.<\/p>\n
Daniil Tarasov stopped 47 shots.<\/p>\n
Former Panther Jeff Petry, Brock Faber and Yakov Trenin had assists for the Wild.<\/p>\n
Minnesota’s Jared Spurgeon was helped off the ice and to the dressing room early in the third after appearing to collide with Noah Gregor near the post.<\/p>\n
Minnesota defenseman and Olympic gold medalist Quinn Hughes played in his 500th career game.<\/p>\n
Up next<\/p>\n
Wild: At Boston Bruins on Saturday. <\/p>\n
Panthers: At New York Islanders on Saturday. <\/p>\n