Wild keep rolling, besting Colorado in a shootout

As far as Black Friday deals go, ticket buyers to Friday’s midday showdown between the NHL’s two hottest teams certainly got their money’s worth.

It may be too early to talk about playoff previews when fans of the Wild and Avalanche are still munching on cold turkey and leftover sweet potatoes, but Minnesota’s 3-2 shootout win over Colorado had all of the markings of a showdown between two teams with designs on meeting again in May.

“You could tell the building was electric from the start of the game, and we knew coming into the game that it was going to be a heavyweight fight,” Wild coach John Hynes said. “Two good teams that are playing strong hockey right now.”

Mats Zuccarello and Matt Boldy scored in the post-overtime shootout as Minnesota asserted its dramatic and thorough re-entry into the Central Division title race after a sluggish first month of the season.

Kirill Kaprizov had a pair of late second period goals as the Wild rallied from a mid-game deficit, improving to 11-1-1 in November. Colorado has now gone 15 games without a regulation loss.

Jesper Wallstedt’s case for the Calder Memorial Trophy as the NHL’s rookie of the year got even stronger, as he made 39 saves and improved to 7-0-2 with the win. He stopped Nathan MacKinnon and Cale Makar in the shootout.

Asked what handing the Avalanche their first loss of any stripe since Nov. 1 means, Wallstedt had a simple answer.

“It kind of says that we’re a better team than them,” Wallstedt said, after he found each stall in the locker room had a ‘Wall of St. Paul’ t-shirt in it before the game on Friday. “We beat them, so that felt good. But ever since we turned it around a little but, I feel like the style we play has been very successful.”

Both teams had early power plays and both goalies were tested before the first media break. In a game where mistakes were rare, the Avalanche jumped on a miscue to take the early lead. Tied up along the boards in the defensive zone, Kaprizov’s no-look pass missed two Wild teammates and went right to the stick of MacKinnon who was alone at the top of the crease. His quick shot resulted in an NHL-best 19th goal of the season.

But Kaprizov atoned for any perceived error just a bit past the midway point of the game. His 200th career goal came with hulking Avalanche defenseman Brent Burns draped all over him, but still unable to stop a Zeev Buium pass from deflecting off Kaprizov and past Wedgewood for the equalizer.

With the goal, Kaprizov passed Zach Parise for third all-time on the Minnesota franchise scoring list. It also snapped a streak of more than 212 minutes Colorado had gone without allowing a goal.

But the Wild star was far from done, and gave Minnesota the lead before the second period was done. Ryan Hartman, who had missed the previous four games with a lower body injury, made an emphatic return when he circled the Colorado net, then fed Kaprizov for a rising shot that beat a sprawling Avalanche goalie Scott Wedgewood.

“I think he just saw me before. It was a nice pass, great pass,” Kaprizov said.

Hartman said he just saw a green jersey open before his pass, but admitted it was nice that the team’s top scoring threat happened to be wearing that jersey.

“It helps that it was Kirill,” Hartman said. “I just made a play to the open guy.”

Gabriel Landeskog scored his third goal of the season in the latter half of the third to tie the game at 2-2.

Wedgewood finished with 35 saves for Colorado, which suffered its only regulation loss of the season on Oct. 25 in Boston. The Avalanche will be back in Minnesota in three weeks for a Dec. 21 rematch versus the Wild.

“Hard-fought on both sides,” Wedgewood said. “I think it ended up, honestly even across the board shots and everything right? They popped two, we pop one in the shootout and (get a) point on the road in a tough, tough building to play. They played well, that’s a really good hockey game. Can’t complain on either side.”

The Wild complete their holiday weekend back-to-back on Saturday evening with the Buffalo Sabres lone visit to St. Paul this season.

Briefly

Friday’s contest was the 400th career game for Wild forward Yakov Trenin, who assisted on Kaprizov’s second goal. He entered the NHL in 2019 and has spent time with Nashville, Colorado and the Wild since then. Trenin entered Friday’s game leading the NHL in hits with 108 this season.