The goal was a beauty, too. Granlund gained control of the puck at neutral along the right-wing boards and led a 2-on-1 break. As he skated to the faceoff dot, Granlund pushed his stick forward and put a perfect backhand pass to Zucker flying through the slow all by himself.
In one motion, Zucker slammed on the brakes at the top of the crease and redirected the puck over the shoulder of Flames goaltender Brian Elliott to get the Wild within a goal at 12:40.
2. The loss snapped Minnesota's 14-game road points streak, providing an appropriate bookend to a franchise-record stretch that began in this same building on Dec. 2.
"It says a lot for how we've been playing and what we've been doing. For it to happen like that with us just not playing great," said Wild forward Zach Parise. "It was a good run. We've got a lot of important games, a lot of good games. Lets learn from it and prepare for the next one."
The Flames (26-24-3) defeated the Wild 3-2 in a shootout that night before Minnesota rattled off 12 consecutive wins, including road victories in Edmonton, Toronto, Nashville, Montreal, New York, Nashville (again) and San Jose. An overtime loss in Los Angeles kept the string going before a few more wins in Anaheim, Dallas and Chicago, Dallas (again) and Edmonton (again).
That's a 12-0-2 mark for those counting at home, which helped spur a 22-3-2 record overall during the streak.
"You don't play well in front of your goalie, you give them opportunities and looks, they're going to score," said Wild coach Bruce Boudreau. "They beat us. They played better than us. I thought going into the third period we still had a good shot at it, but they came out stronger in the third, which is usually a forte of ours. We didn't get it done."
3. Devan Dubnyk's stat line may not have shown it, but the All-Star goaltender gave his team a chance on Wednesday, especially over the first two periods.
Playing in his first game back since his second career All-Star appearance over the weekend, Dubnyk made 31 saves and kept Minnesota (33-12-5) in the game despite an early two-goal hole.
In his hometown of Calgary, Dubnyk surrendered a pair of goals over the first 8:09 of the contest. There was nothing he could do about the first one, a deflection in front by Alex Chiasson, and Sean Monahan's goal less than four minutes later was a power-play tally that gave the Flames an early two-goal cushion.
But Dubnyk locked things down after that, including a 16-save second period where Minnesota clawed back into the game on Zucker's goal.
