Ryan Hartman and Marcus Foligno scored and Jesper Wallstedt made 24 saves for the Wild (26-12-9), who have lost two in a row and four of their past five (1-2-2).
“I just think we had some looks,” Minnesota coach John Hynes said. “We just weren’t as sharp as we needed to be tonight. Whether it was the first period or through the game. We did [have] some real quality looks. But I think overall, it wasn’t, we just weren’t as sharp as we needed to be.”
Mercer made it 1-0 Devils at 10:07 of the first period with a snap shot in the low slot after Hischier worked the puck off the wall behind the net.
Hartman tied it 1-1 at 13:41 of the second period, deflecting in a Brock Faber slap shot from the point.
Palat put New Jersey ahead 2-1 with :08 left in the second, poking a loose puck past Wallstedt.
It was Palat’s first goal in 20 games.
“I mean, [bad], [bad] season for me, offensively struggling to score goals,” Palat said. “So this one is nice to get on board, help the team finally a little bit.”
Bratt tapped in a 2-on-1 finisher with Hamilton to increase the lead to 3-1 at 7:28 of the third period.
Bratt extended the lead to 4-1 just 21 seconds later at 7:49 with a backdoor tip-in.
“We’ve been working hard at it,” Bratt said. “We haven’t been a group that was just hoping for something to happen. I think we’ve been working on it, and then, all of a sudden, things started falling into place. Now it’s just going to be, for us, to make this two games, three games, four games. Make this kind of the standard of how we want to play, and then we’re going to win more games than lose. So I think today was a good step in our direction for us to realize that when we’re playing this way, defensively and on our forecheck, we’re getting a lot more looks.”
