Recap: Wild earn easy 8-2 win over Canadiens

If it is possible to have an extremely comfortable hockey game — a plush puddle of athletic performance — it was tonight against the Montreal Canadiens, for the Minnesota Wild.

Despite allowing the first goal of the game, the Wild were on cruise control for the entire game. But their version of cruise control where it is just an extremely efficient five-player attack that leads to so many damn goals getting scored. It was a comfy 8-2 win by our favorite hockey club.

The entire atmosphere was free-flowing enough for Kirill Kaprizov to play like this; without a care in the world and just dance his little heart out around some poor Montreal defenders, and just simply show off.

The man attempted a between-the-legs goal without even any score security. The audacity of this dude.

And then even earlier, he decided to take a trip around the offensive zone multiple times. He’s just hanging out and having fun at this point.

There was no sense of danger, no worrying of losing this game after the Wild were able to score their second of the night. And again, this is a game where the opponent scored first, but luckily, the captain was able to negate their lead shortly after they opened the scoring.

And before the period ended, the ever-reliable Marcus Foligno was able to give the Wild a lead that they did not look back from.

There are so many damn goals in this game, that I feel that we should just run through them all at lightspeed because you’re really just here to check out the highlights and have a good time. Let’s get going.

Connor Dewar scored his first career goal, hell yes.

And just 22 seconds later, the Wild stretched their lead over the visitors even further.

With a 4-1 lead, thanks to Nico Sturm storming the net and finishing off a shot from Jared Spurgeon that eventually deflected off of Dewar; the Wild didn’t want to settle. Before the second intermission, they added another one when Mats Zuccarello scored off a Kaprizov feed.

After former Wild player and Minnesotan, Rem Pitlick got some revenge and scored his team’s second (and last) goal of the game; the good guys scored again. This time, Matt Boldy earned the third goal of his rookie season.

Okay, it’s one thing to be losing 6-2 in a hockey game, but then Jordie Benn scores a seventh goal????

That’s embarrassing. Yikes.

And the Wild weren’t done there, with Kevin Fiala scoring the finale goal of the incredible display of elite offense.

Joel Eriksson Ek, Ryan Hartman, Matt Dumba, and Dmytri Kulikov were the only Wild players to leave without a point. Nico Sturm of all players led the way with three points against Montreal, and Boldy, Jordan Greenway, Fiala, Zuccarello, Dewar, Kaprizov, Spurgeon, and Alex Goligoski, all earned two points. It’s just nice to see pucks go into the opposition’s net, and this one was full of that.

Unfortunately, Cam Talbot left after two periods, and details on exactly why, will be available later. It was his first appearance since the Winter Classic and his return from injury.

Next up, they’re going east to face the New York Rangers on Friday.

Burning Questions

Kevin, Kirill, Mats. Can they keep it going?

Oh, of course they did. Each forward was able to earn two points tonight and didn’t appear to slow down at all. All three impressed on both ends of the ice and played a complete game.

Will we get a Matt Boldy breakout game?

If we count scoring two points, including an insane goal from a wild angle, as breaking out, then Boldy certainly had one of these. He now has six points in his first six NHL games — he’s so damn good.

Can the Wild special teams excel against this inept squad?

Minnesota had five total power play opportunities, and only managed to score off one of them, but they also kept Montreal scoreless on their two man advantages they had in this one. Not the most powerful special team performance, but also not the worst. In 7:48 on the power play, they managed to have a measly six shots on goal. Just a very blegh output.