Devils get late goal to defeat Wild

ST. PAUL, Minn. -- Beau Bennett scored with 2:17 left in the third period to give the New Jersey Devils a 4-3 win against the Minnesota Wild at Xcel Energy Center on Tuesday.
New Jersey (19-18-9) won the final three games of a four-game road trip (3-0-1). Cory Schneider made 32 saves.
"It was a great way to finish the trip," Schneider said. "It was four [games] in six [nights] on the road with a good amount of travel, and you almost lose sight of that. We saved one of our better games for last against a really good team, and we're going to need wins like this, where you're down and maybe don't expect to come back against a team like that, but you do. Those are important wins throughout the year."

WATCH: All Devils vs. Wild highlights
Devan Dubnyk made 22 saves for Minnesota (28-10-5), which had won four in a row. He was 14-1-0 in his previous 15 starts, allowing 29 goals.
"It's frustrating because we threw it away," Dubnyk said. "We haven't done that. We talked about this is an important game for us. Tie game with two minutes left, that's where we're usually solid."
Jared Spurgeon scored 30 seconds into a power play at 17:58 of the first period to give the Wild a 1-0 lead. It was his fifth goal in the past 12 games, and Minnesota's power play has scored in 11 of the past 14 games.

Jason Zucker increased the lead to 2-0 at 9:24 of the second period. Pavel Zacha made it 2-1 on the power play at 13:19 with a snap shot off a feed by Kyle Palmieri.
Taylor Hall led Adam Henrique on a break for a top-shelf goal to tie the game 2-2 at 5:23 of the third period. The assist extended Hall's point streak to four games (one goal, three assists).
Erik Haula gave Minnesota a 3-2 lead at 9:08, but New Jersey answered with a goal by Palmieri 22 seconds later.
"We knew coming in tonight it was going to be a difficult game, and one of the things we talked about was having some staying power whether we were up or down," New Jersey coach John Hynes said. "Our goal coming into the game was to be more competitive in these types of games, where you're playing a team like the Wild that have had lots of success. They're a top-tier team in the League at this point, and we hadn't been competitive. We stayed competitive in that situation, and fortunately we were able to get ourselves some goals and get back in the game."

Goal of the game

Devils forward Blake Coleman worked the puck out from behind the net to find Bennett breaking in off the bench. The assist was Coleman's first NHL point in his fourth game.
"It was huge getting the confidence to be out there late in the game," Bennett said. "Obviously [Coleman] made a great play, taking on a few of their defensemen, holding on to it, waiting for me to come off the bench and made a great pass, and I'm happy for him to get his first NHL point in a critical time."

Save of the game

Schneider stopped Wild forward Nino Niederreiter in close at 5:14 of the first period.

Unsung performance of the game

New Jersey forward Travis Zajac won the faceoff against Minnesota center Eric Staal at 9:22 of the third period to set up the tying goal. Zajac won 57 percent his faceoffs.

Highlight of the game

After drawing a roughing penalty on New Jersey forward Devante Smith-Pelly, Spurgeon palmed down a Nino Niederreiter rebound and swatted it in for a goal.

They said it

"Well, they kept pushing, and I'm sure they believed they were going to tie it up the way [they] came out in the third period. We just did some uncharacteristically dumb things on all their goals. You can call it what you want, but they earned it, and we didn't." -- Wild coach Bruce Boudreau
"It's a long season, you're not going to have [consistency] for 82 straight games. We've battled with consistency, but I don't know of a team in the NHL that hasn't done it, that hasn't gone through a couple moments of adversity. We got off to a good start, had a tough couple of months on the road, and put ourselves behind the eight ball, but we started stringing a couple together. But like I said, it's a long season, we [have] a lot of hockey left to play." -- Devils forward Kyle Palmieri

Need to know

Wild defenseman Jonas Brodin left at 4:52 of the second period with a broken finger. Boudreau said he expects to know more Wednesday. … Wild forward Mikko Koivu (two assists) has 14 points (five goals, nine assists) in the past 11 games. … Mikael Granlund (assist) has five assists in a four-game point streak.

What's next

Wild:Host the Arizona Coyotes on Thursday (8 p.m. ET; FS-N, FS-WI, FS-A+, NHL.TV)
Devils: Host the Montreal Canadiens on Friday (7:30 p.m. ET; MSG+, SNE, RDS, NHL.TV)