Don’t look now, however the Minnesota Wild are the most popular team within the National Hockey League. The Wild proceed to impress as they punished the Edmonton Oilers 5-2 Saturday, recording their seventh consecutive victory.
The Wild are in the identical division with high-flying Colorado Avalanche and the talented Dallas Stars, and they seem like within the technique of chasing down each teams. The massive move got here last week after 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 in addition to forwards Mats Zuccarello and Vinnie Hinostroza. Bringing back those 4 players clearly gave the Wild more depth and strength, they usually had no problems against Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl and the Oilers.
The return of Brodin was an enormous move, because he’s all the time instrumental within 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 an enormous a part of the sport plan against the Oilers. McDavid scored a goal on the 18:44 mark of the primary period and that allowed the Oilers to tie the rating at 2-2. Nonetheless, 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 on the 19:52 mark of the opening period. Neither team was in a position to rating within the second period, but Vladimir Tarasenko gave the Wild a two-goal cushion when he scored on a rebound on the 9:08 mark of the third period.
Matt Boldy had scored a pair of goals in the primary period and Nico Sturm closed out the scoring with an empty net slam dunk off a pass from Tarasenko late within the third period.