Wild defeat Ducks again, keep pace in West playoff race

ST. PAUL, Minn. -- Victor Rask scored at 2:46 of overtime, and the Minnesota Wild kept pace in the Honda West Division with a 4-3 win against the Anaheim Ducks at Xcel Energy Center on Saturday.

Rask won it when he skated in on a 2-on-1 and shot short side from the left circle on Ryan Miller.
Kirill Kaprizov had two assists, and Cam Talbot made 19 saves for Minnesota (35-14-5), which also won 4-3 in overtime here Friday and is 4-0-2 in its past six games.
The Wild remained one point behind the Colorado Avalanche, who defeated the Los Angeles Kings 3-2 on Saturday and have one game in hand, for second place in the division. Minnesota, Colorado, the first-place Vegas Golden Knights and fourth-place St. Louis Blues have clinched the division's Stanley Cup Playoff berths.
"We took care of business this weekend, gave ourselves a chance at home ice in the playoffs, and then see where the chips fall with Colorado's games moving forward," Wild forward Nick Bonino said. "But we'll just try to handle what we can and see if we have home ice, that's something we'd really like."
Max Comtois and Rickard Rakell each had a goal and an assist for Anaheim (17-30-9). Miller made 21 saves in the final game of 18-season NHL career.
"It was a fun game," Miller said. "Happy with the way we settled back in the third period. It's good to compete to the end.
"I want to say goodbye, and I think it's going to help moving forward for sure. It was a lot of fun."

Rakell gave the Ducks a 1-0 lead at 12:02 of the first period when he redirected a shot from Josh Mahura.
Jared Spurgeon tied it 1-1 at 16:32, finishing a pass from Kaprizov on the power play.
Kaprizov then set up Ryan Hartman on a 2-on-1 to put the Wild ahead 2-1 at 15:05 of the second period. Kaprizov has scored 10 points (five goals, five assists) on a six-game point streak.
"I thought he was going to look me off a couple more times," Spurgeon said. "He's so deceptive with the puck and obviously he's a threat to shoot at any time, so it makes the goalie honor him too. I think on both our goals he made great passes."

Bonino scored 51 seconds after Hartman to extend the lead to 3-1.
Trevor Zegras cut it to 3-2 with a wrist shot from the left circle at 2:18 of the third period, and Comtois tied it 3-3 with 26 seconds remaining and Miller pulled for the extra skater.
"When we were close to .500 for the first 10 or 12 games, I was quietly worried about where we were going because I wasn't sure we were going to be able to make the necessary steps with our younger guys," Ducks coach Dallas Eakins said. "Here we are now, our record is worse, but I've never been more encouraged or excited about our future. The other thing that happened is we got our feet underneath us down the stretch. We got our guys into certain roles that they were comfortable with. I think the guys really started playing hard for each other. The last few games we're playing against very, very good teams and you can see we're right there and we just have to take that next step."
NOTES: Miller will finish his NHL career with 391 wins, the most by a United States-born goalie in NHL history. …The Wild had a .786 points percentage at home this season (21-5-2), the highest in their history.