ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — Joel Eriksson Ek and Kirill Kaprizov each had hat tricks for the Minnesota Wild, who faced a three-goal deficit in the second period before storming back with six unanswered goals and hanging on for a record-filled 10-7 victory over the NHL-leading Vancouver Canucks on Monday.
Minnesota’s six scores in a span of 5:45 was the fastest such flurry in the NHL in 25 years, since Washington had six goals in 4:47 in a game on Feb. 3, 1999.
Matt Boldy, Mats Zuccarello, Marco Rossi and Jonas Brodin also scored for the Wild, who set their franchise record for goals in a game. They also registered their fastest four-goal stretch in team history, all on the power play in a span of 2:17 to take a 6-5 lead early in the third period.
Zuccarello scored with 27 seconds left in the second period. The Wild switched goalies at the intermission from Filip Gustavsson to Marc-Andre Fleury and then they let loose as the sloppy and sluggish Canucks squandered a hat trick by J.T. Miller.
The Minnesota goals came from Eriksson Ek, Kaprizov and Eriksson Ek again in the dizzying first 1:44 of the third period to make it 6-5. Then Rossi knocked in Jake Lucchini’s shot off his skate at 4:48 and Kaprizov tacked on another one at 5:12 to further the damage to Canucks goalie Casey DeSmith.
With Vancouver playing the first half of a back-to-back set of games, coach Rick Tocchet chose to keep primary netminder Thatcher Demko on the bench to rest.
Elias Pettersson got his team-leading 29th goal and Ian Cole had the first goal for the Canucks, who scored on their only two shots on net over the first 15-plus minutes of the game against Gustavsson.
The Canucks (37-14-6) took seven penalties and lost their second consecutive game. They fell to 28-7-2 when scoring first. Nikita Zadorov and Brock Boeser scored in the third period, cutting the lead to 8-7 with 2:08 to go, before the Wild tacked on two empty-netters.
