Gaudreau scores twice, Wild defeat Red Wings for 3rd straight win

ST. PAUL, MInn. -- Frederick Gaudreau scored twice for the Minnesota Wild in their third straight win, 4-1 against the Detroit Red Wings at Xcel Energy Center on Wednesday.

Mats Zuccarello extended his point streak to eight games, and Matt Dumba scored for the Wild (16-11-2), who have won five in a row at home. Filip Gustavsson made 16 saves.
"We thought it was just a really stingy hockey game," Minnesota coach Dean Evason said. "We played strong defensively, they did [too]. There wasn't a lot of exchanges."
Elmer Soderblom scored, and Magnus Hellberg made 18 saves for the Red Wings (13-10-6), who have lost four straight (0-3-1), including 1-0 to the Carolina Hurricanes on Tuesday.
"I loved our response tonight," Detroit coach Derek Lalonde said. "I'm very disappointed in the final outcome, but I thought we had great pushback. We had a great pushback at 2-nothing. We had a great pushback in the third, which is a good sign again.
"It just feels like we didn't give up a whole lot. You might be talking about under 10 chances against. We lost the special teams battle again and just the two breakdowns for goals."

Gaudreau gave the Wild a 1-0 lead with a power-play goal at 14:37 of the first period with a wrist shot from above the right face-off circle.
Dumba made it 2-0 at 8:02 of the second period. Jordan Greenway won a board battle and pushed a loose puck out to Dumba, who scored from the slot.
Soderblom cut it to 2-1 at 18:41 with an open backdoor rebound, but Zuccarello responded 16 seconds later at 18:57 with a shot from his knees for a 3-1 lead.
"Obviously, that's a goal you want back," Hellberg said. "Everyone froze a little bit. I have to be faster making that save, especially in a crucial moment in the game like that we just scored. It killed our momentum a little bit, so yeah, of course it was a tough one for sure."
It was Zuccarello's 10th goal of the season. He has three goals and seven assists during his point streak.
"Just lucky. Nice to see it go in," Zuccarello said. "It was a big goal to go into intermission with [a two-goal lead] instead of one. That was big."

Gaudreau scored an empty-net goal with 42 seconds left for the 4-1 final.
"I hope that teams find it difficult to play against us," Evason said. "Not only just physically but because we're hopefully relentless not only in the defensive zone, but in the offensive zone as well hunting pucks down and keeping pucks in. That is our identity and that is what we want to be, and we've got to that point. So now the challenge again is to continually do that on a nightly basis just over and over again and if we do that, we give ourselves a real good opportunity."
NOTES: Red Wings defenseman Filip Hronek left the game after being hit by forward Ryan Reaves at 3:03 of the first. Lalonde said Hronek wanted to return but was placed in concussion protocol for as a precaution. … Detroit played without forward Dylan Larkin, who sustained an undisclosed injury Tuesday. Soderblom was recalled by the Red Wings from Grand Rapids of the American Hockey League earlier Wednesday, and defenseman Olli Maatta was placed on injured reserve retroactive to Dec. 6. … Gustavsson has won five straight starts since Nov. 19. … Zuccarello is the fourth Minnesota player to score 10 goals this season; the Buffalo Sabres are the only team with more (five). … Wild forward Kirill Kaprizov had an assist and extended his home point streak to 10 games (five goals, 11 assists).