Spurgeon gave the Wild a 1-0 lead with a power-play goal at 5:29 of the first period. He received a pass down low from Ryan Hartman on a 3-on-2 rush and snuck a shot inside Hellebuyck's left arm.
"[Spurgeon] is just everything," Evason said. "How can you say anything without being positive about him? His play is one thing, but you guys don't see, and maybe you do see, in between whistles and timeouts of him going up and down the bench. Coaches don't have to say a thing, and that's so exciting when your leader is not only saying the right thing, but he's doing the right things, dictating to the group this is how we play. And he goes out and executes, and you can't do anything but follow. His game has been all-around great."
Zuccarello made it 2-0 at 6:33 with a one-timer off a drop pass from Kirill Kaprizov.
"They kind of switched up their system a little bit from when we played them in Minnesota (a 6-1 loss on Nov. 23)," Jets defenseman Brenden Dillon said. "I think the biggest thing for them is the forwards blow out of the zone, and their D throw the high flippers, and the hard rims and bouncing pucks are tough to handle sometimes. They've got good players that can make plays. Their top line can obviously hold on to pucks and find the open guy. For the most part we did a pretty good job coming back. They made some nice plays on their goals. Overall, it clearly wasn't good enough."
