Zuccarello extends point streak to 9, Wild cruise past Blackhawks for 3rd straight win

ST. PAUL, Minn. -- Mats Zuccarello extended his point streak to nine games for the Minnesota Wild, who defeated the Chicago Blackhawks 4-1 at Xcel Energy Center on Sunday.

Zuccarello, who had a goal and two assists, has 13 points (three goals, 10 assists) during his streak.

Marco Rossi scored twice, and Marc-Andre Fleury made 28 saves for the Wild (8-10-4), who have won three consecutive games since John Hynes took over as coach for Dean Evason.

“It’s really been a good week, and I think today, it was just continuing to hammer home the way we want to play,” Hynes said. “We got off to a little bit of a slow start. The penalty kill was big early. (Fleury) had some nice saves, but then I thought that we wanted to get to, what we think is going to give us the best chance to win. So, it was nice that we could put, for the most part, three pretty complete games together.”

Taylor Raddysh scored, and Petr Mrazek made 30 saves for the Blackhawks (7-16-0), who lost 3-1 at the Winnipeg Jets on Saturday. Connor Bedard had an assist to extend his franchise-best road point streak to nine games (eight goals, five assists).

“Well, definitely not a good night for us,” Chicago coach Luke Richardson said. “They’re probably still showing their new coach that they want to play and they really, I thought they outskated us and competed us in those tough areas, especially in front of the net and corners. You’re not going to win many games when you get outworked and outbattled in those areas. 

“I’m not saying that we didn’t try. I think our guys tried, but we have to find a desperation level that they showed us tonight. And we have done that. It’s a matter of, stop feeling sorry for yourself, and going to do it.”

Rossi made it 1-0 2:11 into the first period, deflecting a point shot by Brock Faber. 

Freddy Gaudreau found Rossi in the slot for his second of the game to increase the lead to 2-0 at 12:08 on power play. 

“Our confidence right now is really good as a team,” said Rossi. “We won three in a row. We just try to get better every day.”

Zuccarello finished off a tic-tac-toe passing play from Alex Goligoski and Kirill Kaprizov to make it 3-0 at 17:07.

Matt Boldy extended the lead to 4-0, deflecting a Zuccarello shot 23 seconds into the power play at 11:36 of the second period.

“It was a good game,” Fleury said. “Good, all parts of it. I thought we settled in and played the way we want to, with some speed, some pace. We had the puck a lot. We’re not giving them too much the second and third. PP looked good. So, yeah, fun win.”

Raddysh made it 4-1, getting a piece of a Tyler Johnson cross-crease pass at the right post on a power play at 12:55 of the third period. 

“I feel like we came out to a good start considering the back-to-back,” Raddysh said. “We kind of let that slide away once they got one there. Something we’ve got to try be better. We can’t just fall apart when something bad happens to us. We’ve got to bounce right back and just keep playing the way we’re playing. We can’t let those go away because then we’re down a couple of goals and it’s hard to climb back when that happens.”

NOTES: Zuccarello recorded his 15th career three-point game with the Wild, passing Mikael Granlund (14) for seventh on the franchise’s all-time list. … Under Hynes, Minnesota has outscored opponents a combined 13-3 in three games. … Rossi scored his seventh goal of the season and tied Ducks forward Leo Carlsson for second among NHL rookies. … Fleury recorded his 548th career win, trailing Patrick Roy (551) for second all-time. … Wild defenseman Zach Bogosian did not play and is day-to-day with an upper-body injury. … Chicago defenseman Louis Crevier had one shot and two hits in 15:59 total ice time in his NHL debut