Game Recap: Wild 2, Ducks 0

ST. PAUL, Minn. -- Jesper Wallstedt made 28 saves for his second straight shutout, and the Minnesota Wild defeated the Anaheim Ducks 2-0 at Grand Casino Arena on Saturday.

Wallstedt stopped all 36 shots faced in his previous start, a 2-0 win against the Calgary Flames on Nov. 9. He has two shutouts this season and three in the NHL.

“Keeping goals low is a team result,” Wallstedt said. “It’s something we’re doing as a team. If we can limit scoring chances and blocking shots and taking away sticks and boxing out, obviously my record will look good. But at the end of the day, it’s a team result. We’re doing it all together.”

Matt Boldy had a goal and an assist, and Marcus Johansson also scored for Wild (8-7-4), who have won three of their past four and extended their point streak to four games (3-0-1).

“I just think the details of the game are better and they're more consistent,” Minnesota coach John Hynes said. “I think we're defending harder in our defensive zone.”

Petr Mrazek stopped 28 of 29 shots for the Ducks (11-6-1), who lost their third straight game following a seven-game winning streak.

“Disappointed a lot,” Anaheim coach Joel Quenneville said. “We took 14 minutes and all, all, dumb penalties. Every time we started getting a little momentum or subtraction there, we’d change momentum with a penalty have to kill and use a lot of our good guys. That slows you down. They check well, they had a lot of good sticks in a lot of areas that we have to get to that puck and we just didn’t sustain much.

“They played well and we got what we deserved.”

Johansson gave the Wild a 1-0 lead 55 seconds into the second period. Boldy threaded a pass through to Johansson after he got a step on Ryan Strome, and he scored on the backhand.

Boldy scored into an empty net at 19:05 of the third period for the 2-0 final.

“We took too many penalties,” Mrazek said. “It’s tough when you play 14 minutes and you’re in the penalty box. … You don’t get any flow going on offense. That’s something we got to clean up and learn from.”

NOTES: Ducks forward Mikael Granlund and Wild forward Vladimir Tarasenko were each late scratches with lower-body injuries. Hynes said Tarasenko is day to day. No update was provided on Granlund. … Minnesota has scored first in eight consecutive games -- their longest streak in franchise history. … Wallstedt, who turned 23 on Friday, became the first rookie in franchise history with consecutive shutouts as well as the youngest Wild goaltender to achieve the feat, besting the previous mark set by 24-year-old Darcy Kuemper (two consecutive shutouts from Oct. 9-11, 2014). … Johansson has 12 points (six goals, six assists) in his past 11 games.