Wild roll to victory, but not quite a shutout, against Blue Jackets

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Filip Gustavsson can call himself a goal scorer after his historic empty-netter, but Gustavsson isn’t neglecting his namesake.

Still in the afterglow of the Minnesota Wild’s first goalie goal, Gustavsson returned to his roots by leading the Wild past the Blue Jackets 3-1 on Saturday night at Nationwide Arena with 23 saves.

This is the best start of Gustavsson’s NHL career: He’s 3-0-1 and has given up two goals or fewer in each of his starts.

As for the Wild, they’re 3-0-2 and haven’t trailed in any of their games — a run of 300 regulation minutes. Not only is this the longest the Wild have gone without falling behind to start a season, but this is the fourth-best streak in NHL history, per NHL Stats.

Marco Rossi’s first-period goal was the Wild’s only offense until the third period, when Kirill Kaprizov capitalized on the power play and Mats Zuccarello tacked on a third goal.

After a wide-open Rossi flipped a Yakov Trenin pass over Columbus goalie Daniil Tarasov’s blocker 12 minutes, 40 seconds into the first, the Wild did tuck another puck behind Tarasov almost five minutes into the second period when Jake Middleton buried his own rebound.

But former Wild coach Dean Evason, now behind the Blue Jackets’ bench, challenged the play, and the league ruled the Wild’s Jakub Lauko pushed Columbus’ Jordan Harris into Tarasov, which impeded Tarasov’s ability to protect his net.

That was the beginning of crunch time for the Wild because seconds later, Trenin was dinged for a high stick that put the Blue Jackets on a four-minute power play.

But Gustavsson and the retooled Wild penalty kill were like Teflon, with Gustavsson denying six shots and the players in front of him interrupting another five wind-ups; Middleton led the way with two shot blocks.

Overall, the penalty kill went 3 for 3, its second straight perfect effort. To date, the unit has surrendered only three goals in 12 shorthanded situations.

Back-to-back penalties by Columbus early in the third period gave the Wild power play a turn in the spotlight, and their top players delivered.

Brock Faber set up Kaprizov for his patented one-timer from the right side at 2:52 during a 5-on-3 advantage; the Wild finished 1 for 3.

Then at 8:26, Kaprizov slid a pass to Zuccarello, who cut to the middle and lifted a shot through Tarasov (32 saves) for Zuccarello’s team-leading third goal at the outset of a five-game road trip for the Wild that began without a few key players.

Captain Jared Spurgeon remained behind in Minnesota to rest a lower-body injury that’s related to the back and hip surgeries he had earlier this year.

Ryan Hartman also didn’t play against the Blue Jackets because of an upper-body injury, although the Wild did get Joel Eriksson Ek back after he missed two games with a broken nose.

But the lineup shuffling hasn’t prevented the Wild from picking up at least a point in every game they’ve played, and the steady goaltending they’ve received from Gustavsson is one reason why they’ve been so competitive.

What a week the goalie had: Gustavsson became only the 15th goaltender to score a goal after he made an almost rink-length empty-net shot with nine seconds left in a 4-1 win at St. Louis on Tuesday night — on the power play, no less, a feat that had been accomplished only twice previously by a goaltender.

For an encore, Gustavsson was airtight until Yegor Chinakhov spoiled his shutout bid with 1:25 remaining.

Of the 120 shots Gustavsson has faced, he’s stopped 114 of them.

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