If Koivu was lucky on that goal, he was good on Niederreiter's power-play marker moments into the second. Controlling the action near the right-wing halfwall, Koivu looked off a defender then put a perfectly placed puck on Niederreiter's stick blade for a quick deflection that went under the crossbar.
Game. Set. Match.
"The whole message was, if we could come out in the first period and get a lead on them, they would just would just wanna go home," said Wild coach Bruce Boudreau. "They tried right to the end but a lot of it, their heart was a little down."
The trio of Coyle, Niederreiter and Koivu were puck hounds virtually all night, controlling play right from the drop of the puck. Koivu won 58 percent of his draws and the three spent a majority of their night penetrating the ice below the hashes.
"If you look at Nino and Charlie, that's their strength holding onto the puck down low and you need to support one another and I thought we did that tonight," Koivu said. "Obviously for [Coyle], that first one, it was a big goal for not just for him for the team to get that good start. As soon as you feel good, you want to work on it and keep going shift after shift."
Both Coyle and Niederreiter have been players in the past who feed off early goals, converting that confidence into strong games, and a strong game into strong stretches of games.