Wild keeps 'building' in victory over Coyotes

Four times this season, the Wild has won at least three consecutive games. Minnesota ran its latest streak to four games on Monday night in a 5-2 win against the Arizona Coyotes at Gila River Arena.
In a shortened 56-game regular season, winning games in bunches can go a long way towards cementing one's place in the postseason. One of the main reasons why the Wild is comfortably inside the playoff cutline is because of its ability to rattle off several different winning streaks.
But perhaps the most impressive - and most important - part of its latest win streak is the manner in which Minnesota is going about its business.

The Wild has played 240 minutes of hockey since last Wednesday, and while it hasn't been perfect the entire time, a bulk of it has been steady, solid and complete in its effort.
This time of year, with three weeks remaining before the playoffs, it's the exact kind of progress Wild coach Dean Evason wants to see.

"The right phrase is, 'just keep building,'" Evason said. "Just keep putting them together and keep playing, just keep building and doing the right things every night to set ourselves up to have success.
"It's a constant learning game. There's no perfect game, there's going to be turnovers and honestly, that's what we talked to the group about this morning. We get that there's gonna be turnovers. Just limit them in those key areas. When we got up 3-1 tonight, we challenged the group to do the right things, and for the most part we did."
On a micro level, the Wild did make mistakes on Monday night.
Ryan Suter had a turnover that led directly to Arizona's first goal. The Wild allowed a goal in the first 75 seconds of the third period, seeing its lead cut in half and momentum stalled, if only briefly.

But on a macro level, Minnesota overcame all of that adversity in a crucial game where the Wild, with its victory, all but ended the Coyotes' hopes of realistically catching Minnesota in the West Division standings.
It was a slow start offensively, but Minnesota kept working, drew a power play, scored on it, then saw its playmakers immediately become more engaged.
After Christian Fischer took Suter's turnover and scored to tie the game late in the first, Jordan Greenway snapped a 21-game goal drought by giving the Wild the lead again early in the second.
Minnesota extended that lead with yet another power-play goal - it's second of the game - midway through the second.

After Grand Rapids native Alex Goligoski scored 1:15 into the third, Kevin Fiala made sure the Wild wouldn't be sweating any late-game heroics from the home team, pushing the lead back to two goals five minutes later.
Not perfect, individually. But on the whole, pretty darn good.
Building, towards something even better.

"Right now we're clicking, but I don't even think we're at our peak yet. There's some lulls in our game that we can figure out," said Wild forward Marcus Foligno. "But we're just trying to fine-tune it and get ready before playoffs start. Right now, that's the main goal the last couple of games here.
"I just love our balance, our depth. It's huge right now for our success. It's something that you can rely on come playoffs."
Perhaps it's no surprise that Foligno's return to the lineup has coincided with some of the Wild's best play of the season.
Foligno had a beautiful assist on Greenway's goal, then was robbed of a goal of his own a few minutes later when officials determined he had made inadvertent contact with Coyotes goaltender Darcy Kuemper ... even though that contact occurred outside the blue paint and even though it sure seemed like Kuemper initiated that contact.
In the midst of his best season as a pro, Foligno missed a little more than a month with a lower-body injury, but returned to the lineup last Wednesday and hasn't missed a beat.

"I was joking with Greener and [Joel Eriksson Ek] a couple days ago that my hands and timing was not there," Foligno said. "But I was skating as hard as I could all over the ice and tried to be physical. But now I feel like, you get four games in and you feel a little bit more confident and it's just easy playing with Greener and Ekker. We play that north-south game."
His return has made an already deep forward group even deeper and more balanced. His line, with Greenway and Eriksson Ek, has been a physical matchup nightmare for opponents all season.
And, there is undeniable chemistry.
"We've played together for awhile, and I think our games individually, they complement each other pretty well," Greenway said. "We all like to be physical, create space for each other and make plays when we need to."

Add in the Kaprizov line, and the newfound chemistry on display with the Wild's fourth line of Nick Bonino, Zach Parise and Nico Sturm, and all the puzzle pieces seem to be falling into place at the right time.
At least that's the hope.
"There's parts of our game that we can continue to improve on," Greenway said. "Our power play has been great, but there are areas where we can continue to get better at and I think that's our focus. We want to go into the playoffs moving in the right direction and confident in our game. I think that's our focus right now, just continuing to build on what we have going."
Related:
Postgame Hat Trick: Wild 5, Coyotes 2