Wild’s Top Line Leads in Win Over Ducks

The Minnesota Wild and Anaheim Ducks met in Anaheim for their second meeting of the season on Friday evening, Dec. 6. Both teams were facing their share of injury issues, as the Wild were without Joel Eriksson Ek, Mats Zuccarello, Jonas Brodin, and Jakub Lauko. On the other hand, the Ducks were without their star Trevor Zegras, who was injured Wednesday night, Dec. 4, against the Vegas Golden Knights. They were also without Leo Carlsson, who had an upper-body injury. 

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The goaltender battle was between Filip Gustavsson for the Wild and John Gibson for the Ducks. The game started a bit slow but found its pace in the second, and the Wild took a commanding lead and won 5-1. This moves the Wild to 18-4-4 and the Ducks to 10-12-3.

Game Recap

The first period was pretty tame in scoring and physicality, but in the second, everything opened up. A few minutes into the second period, the Wild drew a penalty and found the back of the net on the power play. Marco Rossi beat Gibson on a pass from Kirill Kaprizov and Jared Spurgeon to put his team up 1-0. 

That started a chain reaction, with the Wild adding another goal a few minutes later as Matt Boldy took a shot that Gibson eventually kicked in to make it 2-0. The third goal came barely two minutes after the second, and it was Boldy for his second in a row to make it 3-0. 

The third period started with the Wild on a power play once again. Shortly after it ended, they added their fourth goal of the night, courtesy of Kaprizov. The scoring settled down through the middle of the period, but towards the end, the Ducks got one past Gustavsson. 

The Ducks’ Brock McGinn was left open and made it count to take away the shutout and make it 4-1. The Wild added one more goal under two minutes to go in regulation as Yakov Trenin tallied his first goal shorthanded on an empty net to give his team the 5-1 win. 

The Wild won’t have much time to celebrate this win as they’ll head on the road to face the Los Angeles Kings to finish off this back-to-back on Saturday evening, Dec. 7. The Ducks will have the next few days off before they head on the road to face the Montréal Canadiens on Monday evening, Dec. 9.