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How Kirill Kaprizov's dominance, Filip Gustavsson's bounce back fueled Wild past Lightning: 3 takeaways

2 November 2024Last Update :
How Kirill Kaprizov's dominance, Filip Gustavsson's bounce back fueled Wild past Lightning: 3 takeaways

ST. PAUL, Minn — After a 5-1-1 road trip, the Minnesota Wild returned home for the first time since Oct. 12 and improved to 15-3 all time at home against the Tampa Bay Lightning with a 5-3 victory.

Kirill Kaprizov, named earlier in the day as the NHL’s third star of the month in October, snapped a 2-2 tie with 5 minutes, 23 seconds left, to cap his seventh consecutive multi-point game. He now leads the league in points with 21. Marco Rossi threw a puck that squeezed through Andrei Vasilevskiy back into the crease and the puck ricocheted into the net off Kaprizov’s left leg. He later added an empty-netter after a huge blocked shot by Jonas Brodin helped prevent the game from being tied.

Matt Boldy also scored an empty-netter, which proved to be huge and to be the winner after Nick Paul scored with 2:26 left.

Brock Faber broke a 1-1 tie early in the third period, but Jake Guentzel, who grew up 12 minutes from Xcel Energy Center in Woodbury, tied the score in the third period with Tampa Bay’s second power-play goal of the game.

Joel Eriksson Ek also scored his fifth goal.

Kaprizov extended his assist (11) and point streaks (16) to seven games.

Filip Gustavsson made 27 saves to improve to 5-1-1 this season. The Wild improved to 7-1-2.

The Wild’s three-game homestand continues Sunday with a 5 p.m. game against the Toronto Maple Leafs.

Good bounce-back game by Gustavsson

After allowing six goals in Philadelphia during his previous start, including two goals on his first three shots faced, four on his first 10 and being unable to lock it down after the Wild rallied for a 4-3 lead in the third period, Gustavsson showed it was a one-off.

He was dynamite in the first period especially, swallowing pucks and controlling his rebounds. He had to be good, too, because the Wild were turning pucks over left and right all game and playing right into the hands of the Lightning.

The Wild were outshot 11-2 in the first half of the first period and 15-6 overall, yet Gustavsson only gave up one goal on a power play after making a fabulous save on Victor Hedman. That allowed the Wild the ability to tie the score at 1-1 on Eriksson Ek’s goal 47 seconds into the second period.

Nice try, Marco

There was a wee bit of confusion in the second period when Marco Rossi shot a bouncing puck off the end wall that caromed into the trapezoid in the right corner of the rink.

But suddenly Rossi found a puck sitting at the back of the net, scooped it up and tucked it into the back of the net without Vasilevskiy reacting.

While some fans thought the Wild took a 2-1 lead, the referees checked with Toronto at the next stoppage and realized there somehow were two pucks on the ice and Rossi scored with another one. On the previous power play, two shots by the Wild — one by Kaprizov, the other by Faber, hit the netting.

It’s likely that one fell onto the ice without anybody realizing.

Hartman returns to lineup

Ryan Hartman returned to the lineup after missing five games with an upper-body injury. He played 11:09 minutes and had one shot on goal.

With Freddy Gaudreau playing well between Marcus Foligno and Yakov Trenin in the final four games of the road trip, Hartman started the game by playing right wing on the fourth line with Jakub Lauko and Marat Khusnutdinov.

The lines did get scrambled in the back half of the second period because Marcus Johansson left the game with an injury. Hartman was elevated during those minutes and was popped up to the third line in the third period to the right of Foligno and Gaudreau. Trenin, who has one assist in 10 games, was dropped to the fourth line.

This is an injury Hartman may have to play through for a while. It’s clear he’s not completely healed.

“I had something similar to this last year,” Hartman said. “I was able to kind of play through it. But this one was a little different with where I was and how it affected the way I could do things. So it’s been kind of just waiting for it to feel good enough to go.”

(Photo: Nick Wosika / Imagn Images)

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