VAN@MIN: Horvat stuffs shot home from the doorstep

ST. PAUL, Minn. -- Jacob Markstrom made 23 saves to win his second consecutive start of a back-to-back when the Vancouver Canucks defeated the Minnesota Wild 4-1 at Xcel Energy Center on Sunday.

Bo Horvat scored twice and J.T. Miller had two assists for Vancouver (25-17-4), which defeated the Buffalo Sabres 6-3 on Saturday. Markstrom made 25 saves against Buffalo.
"I think we gained a lot of confidence in our last win in Buffalo and just kind of carried it into tonight," Horvat said. "I thought we played really well, limited their opportunities, maybe slipped away a little bit in the third there, but overall I thought we played a really solid game."
WATCH: [All Canucks vs. Wild highlights]
Marcus Foligno scored and Devan Dubnyk made 26 saves for the Wild (20-19-6), who have lost three straight (0-2-1) and are 1-4-1 in their past five.
"It stings. It's a game where if we played the right way and we're a little bit smarter, we'd probably come out on top," Foligno said. "A lot of losses this year have just been beating ourselves up.
"These efforts, these games, they stink. That's all it is. We didn't get beat. We beat ourselves in a lot of categories. It seems like a lot of losses like that have happened this year where we beat ourselves. It's something where we have to go back tomorrow and play a team."
Four goals were scored in the second period, including three in less than two minutes.
Elias Pettersson redirected a shot from Quinn Hughes on the power play at 9:20 of the second period for a 1-0 lead.
Foligno deflected in a shot by Luke Kunin at 11:58. Horvat responded 13 seconds later with a wraparound goal to make it 2-1. Troy Stecher extended the lead 3-1 at 13:23.
Horvat scored into the empty net with six seconds remaining in the third period.
"I like to say [confidence is] high but we're pretty even-keeled," Stecher said. "Guys aren't getting too high right now or getting too low. We just look at our division and look how tight it is, there's really no time to celebrate. We just got to get ready for the next game."

VAN@MIN: Pettersson tips Hughes' shot home for PPG

They said it

"I was going low-glove. … I just wanted to get by them and that's the only place I could put it." -- Canucks defenseman Troy Stecher on his goal, the ninth of his career and third this season

VAN@MIN: Stecher beats Dubnyk with short-side wrister

"We're not a team that's going to go tic tac toe, tic tac toe, and score goals. We're a team when we're going well, we get shots on net, we go to the net, like [Foligno's] goal. That's how we score. We grind it out. But we don't have enough guys grinding right now."-- Wild coach Bruce Boudreau

Need to know

Horvat has 12 points (five goals, seven assists) in his past seven games. … Wild defenseman Greg Pateryn made his season debut after having bilateral core muscle repair surgery on Oct. 1. He had four hits and one blocked shot in 12:27 of ice time. …Wild forward Jason Zucker was minus-1 and had one shot in 16:12 of ice time in his first game after missing the previous 10 games with a fractured fibula. … Foligno has five points (four goals, one assist) in his past four games.

What's Next

Canucks:At the Winnipeg Jets on Tuesday (8 p.m. ET; TSN3, SNP, NHL.TV)
Wild: At the Pittsburgh Penguins on Tuesday (7 p.m. ET; NBCSN, ATTSN-PT, NHL.TV)

Horvat scores twice as Canucks defeat Wild