Postgame Hat Trick: Wild 5, Sharks 2

On Saturday night, the Wild scored a 5-2 victory over the San Jose Sharks at Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul.
Wild.com's Dan Myers provides three takeaways in the Postgame Hat Trick, presented by Associated Bank. Learn more on how to score up to $500 by opening a Wild Checking account.

1. Home sweet home.
The Wild has been virtually unstoppable on its home sheet over the past couple months, a trend that continued on Saturday night ... and this week.
By winning the second of back-to-back games against the Sharks, Minnesota wrapped up yet another perfect 3-0 homestand, sweeping a trio of games this week against Arizona and (two) against San Jose, two teams directly behind the Wild in the race for a postseason spot in the West Division.
Minnesota improved to 17-4-0 at Xcel Energy Center this season, and has now been victorious in 15 of its past 16 games here dating back to Jan. 31. The Wild's only loss during that nearly three-month stretch was a 5-4 loss to Colorado on April 5.

The Wild's success at home is a good harbinger. Minnesota is in a strong position to nail down a playoff spot already, but should things get murky on the road next week, or any point the following week, the Wild will play its final five games on home ice during the last nine days of the regular season.
Minnesota has 13 games remaining before the end of the year and needs just 10 points in those contests to clinch a playoff spot - and that doesn't take into account what other teams around them are doing.

Of those 13, seven will come on home ice and six coming on the road. Four of those six will occur next week as Minnesota heads west for a pair of games in Arizona before a California back-to-back next weekend in Los Angeles on Friday and San Jose on Saturday.
2. A quick turn of the tide.
Like it did on Friday night, Minnesota actually allowed the first goal in this one, when Brent Burns fired a shot that eluded Wild goaltender Kaapo Kahkonen's glove.

But as it did 24 hours early, it rallied with a pair of quick goals and never looked back after that.
This time, the Wild scored twice in a span of 36 seconds, and three times in a stretch of 72 seconds, all in the first period, turning a 1-0 deficit into a 3-1 lead.

Mats Zuccarello got things going with a power-play goal, followed by a Joel Eriksson Ek tally that he chested into the cage behind Martin Jones. Zach Parise followed with a salvo through the five hole of the Sharks goaltender, his 199th goal in a Wild sweater and his 400th point since joining the club in 2012. Parise now has four goals in his past five games since returning from the COVID-19 protocol list.

Kirill Kaprizov added his 17th goal 1:14 into the second period and Nico Sturm added a pretty wraparound goal in the final minute of the second, as Jones was pulled from the contest to start the third period.
After a shaky start, Kahkonen was stellar the rest of the way, finishing with 26 saves to improve to 5-0-0 in his past five starts on home ice.
3. History in the making.
If you were one of the lucky 3,000 or so fans that was inside Xcel Energy Center on Saturday night, or heck, if you just watched it on TV ... you were a witness to some big-time NHL history.
When Sharks forward Patrick Marleau hopped over the boards for his first shift in the first period on Saturday night, he had officially played in his 1,767th NHL game, which tied him with Gordie Howe for the most games played by a player in NHL history.

It's hard to comprehend just how long Marleau has been around, but take a second to think about where in life you were on the night of Oct. 1, 1997 ... the night Marleau made his NHL debut.
The second overall pick in the draft that summer, Marleau made his debut in the League three years before ... the Minnesota Wild did, in October of 2000.
It was a much simpler time. Kirill Kaprizov, Jordan Greenway and Joel Eriksson Ek were among Wild players who weren't yet a year old when Marleau debuted.
His career has spanned five U.S. presidencies and four different decades.

Then, there's this gem of six degrees researched by KSTP-TV sports guru Chris Long, who connected Marleau to Cy Denneny, who played in the NHL's first season back in 1917-18.