Mats Zuccarello's hat trick keeps red-hot Wild rolling over Chicago
Mats Zuccarello had a hat trick and Kirill Kaprizov netted his 18th goal of the season as the Minnesota Wild stayed hot with a 4-1 win over the Chicago Blackhawks Friday night in St. Paul.
The top line did all of the scoring, with Sam Steel collecting a pair of assists, combining for all four goals and assists for Minnesota. Zuccarello had one assist and Kaprizov had two assists on the night to go along with their goals.
Zuccarello took a feed from Kaprizov at 4:54 of the first period for a 1-0 lead and his power-play goal with 43 seconds left in the second period sandwiched Kaprizov's goal and put the Wild up 3-0 going into the third.
Chicago great Jonathan Toews' eight goal of the season cut the lead to 3-1, but that's as close as the rebuilding 'Hawks would get before Zuccarello completed the hat trick with an empty-net goal with 2:09 to go in the game.
Minnesota has won 10 of its last 13 games and is now 17-11-2, just three points behind second place Winnipeg (19-9-1) and five points back of first place Dallas (18-8-5).
Only the Penguins (11-1-1) and Toronto (10-1-2) have been better than the Wild since Nov. 19.
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.