ST. PAUL, Minn. — Stefan Noesen snapped a 2-2 tie with 8:58 left in the third period when a rebound deflected off his shield and into the net one second after Marco Rossi’s second penalty of the game expired as the Carolina Hurricanes rallied from a pair of one-goal deficits to defeat the Wild, 3-2, at Xcel Energy Center.
The Wild had the league’s second-best record (7-1-1) since the All-Star break, but the loss was a back-breaker as the Nashville Predators won for the sixth consecutive time to move six points ahead of the Wild for the eighth and final playoff spot.
The Kings are also six points up for the top wild-card spot. Just three days ago, the Wild moved within two points of a playoff spot with back-to-back road wins in Edmonton and Seattle.
Now, a loss Thursday in Nashville by Minnesota would be devastating.
“This time of year you gotta be a little leery of getting into, ‘This is the biggest game of the year,’” coach John Hynes said. “It’s an emotional time of the year. Every game matters, but it’s not like we’re at Game 72 or 73 right now. … They’re all big. I think it’s just steady on the rudder, making sure that we’re taking care of our own business, and this is what down-the-stretch hockey is. You’re playing meaningful games, and all of them count the same.”
Jordan Staal and Andrei Svechnikov scored for the Canes, while Connor Dewar and Jonas Brodin scored for the Wild. Pyotr Kochetkov made 28 saves for the win.
• Kirill Kaprizov, who was robbed multiple times and hit the post in the third period, and Joel Eriksson Ek saw their eight-game point streaks come to an end.
• The Wild have now blown one-goal leads in four of their past five losses dating to Jan. 25 for seven lost points in the standings.
• The Hurricanes are 21-6-5 for a league-best .734 points percentage since Dec. 12.
• The Wild leave Wednesday for a two-game road trip to Nashville and St. Louis, two of the teams they’re chasing in the standings.
Goal of the year from Stefan Noesen pic.twitter.com/mstE6dtcqC
— Spoked Z (@SpokedZ) February 28, 2024
Sloppy final shift ruins strong second period
All Kaprizov and Declan Chisholm had to do was dump the puck. Instead, two sloppy plays in the waning seconds of the middle period caused a 2-2 game going into the third period. First Staal made a nice play in the neutral zone to initially stop Kaprizov from getting the puck deep, but all Chisholm had to do was dump the puck and the period would have likely ended with a 2-1 Wild lead. He had the entire width of the rink. Or, instead of just sending the puck down the wall, Chisholm managed to nail Matt Boldy at the blue line for a Hurricanes’ counterattack. Chisholm then poorly defended the three-on-two by not stopping Seth Jarvis’ cross-slot pass to Svechnikov, who tied the score with 24.4 seconds left.
“You could see it coming,” Hynes said. “It’s at the end of the shift, guys are tired. That’s a critical area of the rink and a critical time in the game. And we just didn’t execute at that time. It’s unfortunate because that probably was the difference in the game. You could probably live with the power-play goal. You know, that’s a bounce. It goes off Noesen’s face, it goes in. But you lose a one-goal game and … you gifted them one goal.
“When you’re playing good teams, and you’re coming down the stretch and you’re fighting to get in, lots of times those are things in the game where you got to execute at key times.”
Chisholm was accountable for his mistake after the game.
Kaprizov doesn’t get puck deep, then Chisholm has entire blue line to dump it and hits Boldy https://t.co/wHGQqt7HJK
— Michael Russo (@RussoHockey) February 28, 2024
Fourth line has solid night
Doing his best to get struggling Freddy Gaudreau and Ryan Hartman going, John Hynes elevated Gaudreau from fourth-line right wing to second-line center and downgraded Hartman from second-line center to fourth-line right wing. The goal was to get the lifeless Gaudreau to the center-ice position for the first time in 18 games, but the move ignited the fourth line with the line of Brandon Duhaime-Dewar-Hartman on the ice for both first-period goals. Chisholm set up Dewar’s first goal since Jan. 15, then Duhaime muscled his way around the boards to tee up Brodin’s fifth goal in the past nine games. Hartman assisted on both goals.
Jonas Brodin gives Minnesota a 2-1 lead late in the first period pic.twitter.com/xRgKW6rnXL
— Spoked Z (@SpokedZ) February 28, 2024
Maroon, Foligno, Bogosian updates
Zach Bogosian, who has missed three games with an upper-body injury, skated for the first time Tuesday morning since a week earlier when Neal Pionk got the defenseman in the head when Bogosian attempted a check in Winnipeg. Bogosian will travel on the upcoming road trip. Pat Maroon, who underwent back surgery earlier this month, won’t be back in the “near future,” Hynes said. “He’s a little bit a ways away, so not much to update there.” As for Marcus Foligno, he has missed eight games with a lower-body injury. The Wild are trying to be cautious so he can recover for the stretch run. Hynes said he hopes to provide a better update by the weekend.
It’s understandable that Hynes hadn’t changed up his lineup to get Mason Shaw in yet with the Wild winning since the break.
But the shame of this is the Wild still could have signed Shaw for the rest of the season but kept him in Iowa so he could continue to get reps until needed. Now, Shaw, who hasn’t played an NHL game since last April 1, has only nine AHL games under his belt and no action since Feb. 10.
The longer this goes, it would seem Hynes would feel less and less comfortable throwing Shaw into meaningful games.
“We consider those things and talk about them, but … every game’s a different script,” Hynes said. “Like we do every game, we evaluate the lineup and different things. I think sometimes it becomes a misnomer where just because you win games, it doesn’t mean you won’t make lineup changes. I think even though you’re winning, you’ve got to cut through and think, ‘What are the results?’ You want to try to make sure you’re getting the best from everybody.
“But we certainly have Shaw in the conversations and take (the fact he continues to sit) into consideration, and we’ll try to make the right decisions for the individual players and the team in general.”
Three stars
1. Pyotr Kochetkov, Hurricanes: Wild outchanced Carolina plain and simple, but the Canes’ goalie was up to the task with a laundry list of rivalries to continue his solid rookie season.
2. Jordan Staal, Hurricanes: Carolina’s captain has made a career out of great two-way hockey. He scored a first-period goal and made a solid play in the neutral zone to help the Canes to their big late second-period tying goal.
3. Ryan Hartman, Wild: Demoted to the fourth line, he assisted on two first-period goals and made a fabulous pass that nearly led to a Marco Rossi go-ahead third-period goal.
Quotes of the night
“I thought it was a hard-fought battle. I really liked our game. Particularly in the second period, I thought we controlled the play and didn’t give much up. But it’s the little details of things. (The Chisholm dump-in) are must-make plays that gotta go in. That’s really the lesson out of the game. It’s just continuing to recognize key situations in games, decisions that need to be made at certain times.” — Hynes.
“Huge. Huge. We’re all looking forward to that. This is behind us now and that’s the next goal. We’re working towards that now.” — Chisholm on the importance of Thursday’s game in Nashville.
“We’ve got a lot of games left and we can’t get down after one game. We’ve got a lot of important games coming up. What do we have, 22 more games? So, we’re going to play those guys a lot — like Nashville, St. Louis and Seattle — so we’ve just gotta keep going. Today was a pretty good game. We could have won that game, for sure, but today it just didn’t bounce our way.” — Brodin.
(Photo: Matt Krohn / USA Today)
