CALGARY, Alberta — One of the many often-repeated truisms of hockey says that trying to end another team’s season is among the hardest games you will play.
With a chance to clinch a playoff spot and put the Calgary Flames on the brink of elimination, the Minnesota Wild found that task harder than they could manage on Friday.
Just 48 hours after they had posted a season-best eight goals in a home win over San Jose, the Wild’s offense ran dry in Alberta as Calgary led from start to finish, winning 4-2 and ensuring that Minnesota’s postseason plans will have to wait.
Dustin Wolf, the lanky northern California kid who has been Calgary’s mainstay as a rookie goalie, needed to stop just 16 shots to grab the two points that pulled the Flames within three of Minnesota in the Western Conference standings. Calgary has a game in hand, as well.
Yakov Trenin spoiled the Calgary shutout with 4:21 left in a game that was already decided, and Minnesota got an extra-attacker goal from Gustav Nyquist but could not close the gap.
Wild coach John Hynes said this is two games in a row where the team has not played to its identity.
“San Jose game was a little bit of a pond hockey game for us, and then tonight we were the second most competitive team on the ice. So, that’s not really who we are and what we’ve been, but we’ve got to make sure that that’s gonna be different tomorrow night,” he said, referencing the looming road game at Vancouver.
With two regular-season games remaining, the Wild still control their own playoff destiny but are now at significant risk of an eighth-place finish, which would mean a playoff visit to conference-leading Winnipeg starting next week.
Wild goalie Filip Gustavsson had 25 saves for the Wild before giving way to Marc-Andre Fleury with 12:40 to play. Gustavsson will start Saturday’s game in Vancouver, with Minnesota in even more desperate need of points. And in an all-too-familiar story this season, the Wild lost another player of note to injury as captain Jared Spurgeon missed most of the second period, returned for a few shifts in the third, then left the game before the final horn.
Calgary, which won all three of its games versus the Wild this season, got a pair of second-period goals to break open a tight game, and has two of its remaining three games at home.
After the Wild survived a few early scares, Calgary broke through after Gustavsson stopped a long-range shot. Mikael Backlund flipped the rebound over the goalie’s blocker, giving the Flames a 1-0 lead at the end of the first period.
Spurgeon was injured on his opening shift of the second, and then things got worse for the visitors when Yegor Sharangovich deflected a puck past Gustavsson on the stick side for a 2-0 Flames lead. The deficit grew to three when Calgary scored on the game’s first power play.
“There’s just times (that we have to) play simple and we don’t do it, and it bites us. We didn’t generate a lot of shots to the net. We passed up things in the second where maybe we could have found momentum,” veteran wing Marcus Foligno said. “That’s the thing, I think sometimes we kill ourselves on momentum. There’s a time in the game where you can turn it around, (and) we choose a harder play, or not thinking quicker, and tonight it bit us.”
Minnesota’s best chance to chip away came late in the second when Calgary was called for consecutive penalties, giving the Wild nearly 4 straight minutes of man advantage. But they managed just two shots on Wolf in that span and headed to the second intermission still down by three. The Wild had shots by Vinnie Hinostroza and Joel Eriksson Ek strike posts in the period, but both slid harmlessly away.
The Wild pressured Wolf to start the third, ...
