Kaprizov, Fiala set franchise bests,wildbeatkraken6-3
ST. PAUL, Minn. — Kirill Kaprizov had a goal and three assists to become the first player in Minnesota franchise history with at least 100 points in a season, and the Wild established four franchise records and tied another in beating Seattle 6-3 Friday night.
Joel Eriksson Ek had two goals and an assist, Mats Zuccarello, Ryan Hartman and Nick Deslauriers also scored, and Kevin Fiala had a team-record five assists for Minnesota, which also established all-time bests with its 50th win and 107 points.
Marc-andre Fleury overcame an early gaffe and had 25 saves to improve to 7-1-0 since being acquired from Chicago at the trade deadline.
Daniel Sprong and Yanni Gourde scored early for Seattle, which saw its season-high three game-winning streak end. Philipp Grubauer finished with 29 saves.
Matty Beniers also scored for the Kraken to become the first rookie to begin his NHL career with points in five consecutive games since New Jersey’s Ty Smith Jan. 14-24, 2021.
Tying his career-high with four points, Kaprizov has 45 goals and 56 assists for the Wild, winners of four straight and 7-0-2 in their past nine games. Minnesota is 16-1-3 in its past 20 outings, outscoring opponents 77-48 while scoring at least three goals in 18 of those games.
The Wild are 12-0-1 in the past 13 home games, tying a team record for consecutive points. It went 10-0-3 from Dec. 27, 2017, to Feb. 13, 2018. Minnesota, which holds a two-point advantage over St. Louis for second place in the Central Division, is 29-6-2 at Xcel Energy Center. The teams are locked into a first-round playoff matchup.
Fiala is on a four-game multipoint streak and has nine goals and 12 assists in a nine-game scoring stretch.
Matt Boldy had an assist to extend his official career-high point streak to eight games, surpassing Marian Gaborik’s rookie record of seven. Boldy has points in his last 10 games; however, he missed four games with an injury after the first two.
Senators 2, Blue Jackets 1
COLUMBUS, Ohio — Tim Stutzle scored in the shootout to lift the Ottawa Senators to a 2-1 victory over the Columbus Blue Jackets on Friday night for their second straight road win.
Brady Tkachuk also scored and Filip Gustavsson stopped 33 shots for Ottawa in his first career shootout win.
“It felt like a little bit of a slow game, the two first periods, like we didn’t really play our best game, offensively,” Gustavsson said. “Then we did pretty good in the third period, and we came out of it with the win.”
Jack Roslovic had Columbus’ goal and Elvis Merzlikins had 25 saves in the Blue Jackets’ fourth straight loss (0-3-1).
Roslovic put the Blue Jackets up 1-0 at 11:20 of the first, burying a tape-to-tape pass from Cole Sillinger from the right circle for his second power-play goal of the year.
“We had some looks,” Blue Jackets coach Brad Larsen said. “We just couldn’t get the next one.”
Parker Kelly appeared to pull Ottawa even at 10:02 of the second but the goal was disallowed for offside.
Tkachuk finally put the Senators on the board at 7:06 of the third off tic-tac-toe passing from Drake Batherson and Josh Norris that caught Merlikins looking. The goal was Tkachuk’s team-leading 61st point of the season.