Fleury denied victory in historic game as Wild suffer weekend sweep
Victory in his 1,000th career game in the NHL was not to be for future Hall of Fame goalie Marc-Andre Fleury.
The Minnesota wild netminder allowed a pair of goals in the third period as the Winnipeg Jets won in St. Paul 3-2 for a weekend sweep of the Wild. The Jets beat Minnesota 4-2 Saturday afternoon in Canada.
Minnesota took a 2-1 lead on Frederic Gaudreau's power play goal 3:56 into the third period only to have Jake Middleton get whistled for hooking 44 seconds later and the Jets capitalized with Vladislav Namestnikov's game-tying goal just 12 seconds into the man advantage.
Fewer than three minutes later the Jets skated with a 6-on-5 advantage thanks to a delayed penalty on Minnesota and Dominic Toninato second attempt at a backhand off a juicy rebound flipped over Fleury and into the net for the deciding goal.
Fleury is the fourth goalie in NHL history to reach 1,000 games. The others are Martin Brodeur (1,266), Robert Luongo (1,044) and Patrick Roy (1,029). Fleury's 550 career wins is one short of tying Roy for second in league history.
Minnesota played without star winger Kirill Kaprizov, who missed the game with an upper-body injury after receiving multiple unpenalized cross-checks to his lower back during Saturday's game.
Harsh feelings leftover from Saturday's contest led to a fight immediately after the puck dropped Sunday, with Minnesota's Patrick Maroon throwing fists with Winnipeg's Adam Lowry.
Winnipeg is 6-0-2 in its last eight games and 10-1-2 in its past 13 games. Minnesota has now 11-5 since John Hynes replaced Dean Evason as head coach on Nov. 28.
Up next: Wild vs. Calgary, Tuesday at 7:10 p.m. CT.
Title: Bring Me The Sports co-owner, editor Email: joe@bringmethenews.com Twitter: @JoeBMTN Education: Southwest Minnesota State University Location: Minneapolis, Minnesota Expertise: All things Minnesota sports Nelson has covered Minnesota sports for two decades, starting his media career in sports radio. He worked at small market Minnesota stations in Marshall and St. Cloud before joining one of the nation's highest-rated sports stations, KFAN-FM 100.3 in the Twin Cities. There, he was the producer of the top-rated mid-morning sports show with Minnesota Vikings announcer Paul Allen. His radio experience helped blossom a career as a sports writer, joining Minneapolis-based Bring Me The News in 2011. Nelson and Adam Uren became co-owners of Bring Me The News in 2018 and have since more than tripled the site's traffic and launched Bring Me The Sports in cooperation with the Sports Illustrated/FanNation umbrella. Nelson has covered the Super Bowl and numerous training camps, NFL combines, the MLB All-Star Game and Minnesota playoff games, in addition to the day-to-day happenings on and off the field of play. Nelson also has extensive knowledge of non-sports subjects, including news and weather. He works closely with Bring Me The News meteorologist Sven Sundgaard to produce a bevy of weather and climate information for Minnesota readers. Nelson helped launch and manage the Bring Me The News Radio Network, which provided more than 50 radio stations around Minnesota with daily news, sports and weather reports from 2011-17.