Wild shredded by Penguins without injured Fleury
No Marc-Andre Fleury, no problem? Not exactly. With Fleury on the shelf with an upper-body injury, Filip Gustavsson got the start in goal and the Penguins shredded him in a 6-4 win over the Minnesota Wild Thursday night.
Pittsburgh scored twice in the first before the Wild got goals from Brandon Duhaime and Joel Eriksson Ek 12 seconds apart in the second period to tie the game.
The Penguins took a 3-2 lead into the third period thanks to a Kris Letang goal, and they made it 4-2 on Sidney Crosby's power play goal midway through the third. It was Crosby's second of the night and ninth of the season.
A shorthanded goal – the fourth of the season for the Wild – by Eriksson Ek cut the deficit to one, but only momentarily as the Penguins pushed the lead to 5-3 on Brock McGinn's goal as he fought off two defenders and fired a shot from the high slot past Gustavsson.
Jake Guentzel's empty-net goal made it 6-3 with 3:29 to play in the third.
Matt Dumba's goal with 7.6 seconds left made the final score a little more respectable for the Wild, who fell to 7-8-2 this season.
Gustavsson allowed five goals on 30 shots on net.
Minnesota is now 2-5-1 at home this season. They lost just 10 games in regulation at the Xcel Energy Center during the 2021-22 season.
Related: Marc-Andre Fleury injury update; Wild change up lines
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.