Wild hand Oilers first loss under Woodcroft

EDMONTON -- The Minnesota Wild handed the Edmonton Oilers their first loss under coach Jay Woodcroft, 7-3 at Rogers Place on Sunday.

Kevin Fiala had two goals and an assist, and Matt Boldy and Mats Zuccarello each had a goal and an assist for the Wild (31-13-3), who had lost two straight. Kaapo Kahkonen made 30 saves.
"Sometimes it doesn't go in and tonight, it kind of went in," Fiala said. "We started well. We know losing two in a row is not good enough for us. We are not always going to win, but we don't want to lose two in a row, and tonight was a great response for us."
Tyler Benson scored his first NHL goal for the Oilers (28-19-3), who had won five straight since firing Dave Tippett on Feb. 10. Mike Smith allowed four goals on seven shots before being replaced in the first period by Mikko Koskinen, who made 12 saves.
"Obviously, we didn't have much jump today," Edmonton forward Leon Draisaitl said. "We got off to a really bad start. This league is too hard to come back from a 4-0 deficit. We had a little push in the second but couldn't really get anything going."

Brandon Duhaime gave Minnesota a 1-0 lead at 2:49 of the first period on a one-timer from the left hash marks.
Joel Eriksson Ek scored a power-play goal to make it 2-0 at 5:21.
Fiala extended the lead to 3-0 at 6:17, toe-dragging Darnell Nurse before shooting glove side on a 2-on-1. He then made it 4-0 at 13:38 when skated in alone down the left wing.
"I think we played our game more tonight, right from the beginning, just getting pucks in and playing hard and not letting them break out," Boldy said. "It's definitely more our style of how we want to play. No matter what, our starts could be a little better than they were, and that's obviously a big key to our game, getting a good start, getting pressure on them and getting on them from the beginning."

Evander Kane made it 4-1 at 16:32 of the first, redirecting in a centering pass from Ryan Nugent-Hopkins on the power play.
"It just wasn't sharp enough of a start, and then you are trying to chase the game," Nurse said. "There were too many Grade-A chances, whether it was breakaways or 2-on-1s. It is tough to give your goalies those kind of looks in a game."
Connor Dewar pushed it to 5-1 at 8:28 of the second period, and Boldy scored from the high slot off a toe-drag at 14:21 for a 6-1 lead.
"I'm not happy with the result, I'm not happy with the way we began the game as a group," Woodcroft said. "I thought we made some errors that can be cleaned up. You find yourself down 4-1 at the end of the first period, and you go into the dressing room and you talk about the things you want cleaned up. I thought we got a little better as the game went on, but just some mental errors that ended up in the back of our net."

Benson made it 6-2 at 15:58 when he jammed in a loose puck in the crease, but Zuccarello beat Koskinen glove side on a breakaway to make it 7-2 at 5:36 of the third period.
Zach Hyman scored at 18:54 for the 7-3 final.
"We were on the right side of the puck all night, in all three zones, but especially in the D-zone," Minnesota coach Dean Evason said. "We really took care of being between the net and the players, and nobody really got behind us. We were very mindful of where everybody was on the ice, and it led to offense. We don't feel we're an offensive team, we feel we're a well-rounded, two-way hockey team. We don't want to get into track meets, we don't want to get into a rush game, that's not who we are. We talk about it all the time, it's grit before skill, and if we do that, then our skill will show. If we try to do it the other way, then the skill doesn't come out."
Wild forward Nick Bjugstad had two assists and was plus-3 in 11:16 of ice time in his return after missing 15 games because of a broken finger.