Streaky Wild win 4th straight to stay in hunt for wild card
Joel Eriksson Ek scored his team-leading 24th goal of the season and the Minnesota Wild topped the Arizona Coyotes 3-1 inside Mullet Arena on Wednesday night in Tempe, Arizona.
Eriksson Ek lit the lamp on a Minnesota power play in the first period. Then in the second period, the Wild took a 2-0 lead on Jonas Brodin's third goal of the season.
Ex-Minnesota Gophers star Logan Cooley cut Arizona's deficit to 2-1 with a goal early in the third period, but the Wild reclaimed a two-goal cushion on Matt Boldy's 19th of the season with 9:56 to play.
Fun fact 1: Eriksson Ek's career high is 26 goals. He's at 24 in just 53 games this season.
Fun fact 2: Minnesota out-shot Arizona 43-26 and Kirill Kaprizov led the Wild with eight shots on goal.
Minnesota has won four consecutive games and is 8-2 in their last 10, improving to 25-23-5 for the season. With 55 points they are just three points behind St. Louis for the second wild card in the Western Conference, though they're also chasing Nashville (56 points) and Calgary (55 points).
The Los Angeles Kings own the first wild card with 58 points, but they've played just 50 games compared to 52 games played by the Blues and 53 for Minnesota.
Up next: Wild vs. Buffalo Sabres, 4 p.m. CT on Saturday.
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.