Dubnyk Gets 6th Shutout Of Season As Wild Beat Oilers 4-0
EDMONTON, Alberta (AP) — Acquiring Devan Dubnyk continues to look like a master stroke by the Minnesota Wild.
Dubnyk stopped all 15 shots he faced to get his sixth shutout of the season, leading the Minnesota Wild to a 4-0 victory over the Edmonton Oilers on Friday night.
The former Oilers goalie has five shutouts in 16 games for Minnesota since being acquired in a trade with Arizona on Jan. 14. Dubnyk, who spent 4 1/2 seasons with Edmonton before being traded to Nashville last season, improved to 5-0 this season against the Oilers.
"That was just a really, really good road game by us, right from the get-go," Dubnyk said. "We methodically chipped away at the game, we had good puck possession and we were coming back on top of pucks and we didn't give them much of anything. We just played a great hockey game."
Justin Fontaine had two goals, and Nino Niederreiter and Jordan Schroeder also scored for the Wild, who improved to 10-1-1 in their last 12 games.
"We have to make sure we're not getting too far ahead of ourselves, there is a lot of work to be done," Minnesota coach Mike Yeo said. "We're pleased with our game, I think that we're confident and one thing that we've done well is that if we win a game we put it behind us, we lose a game, we put it behind us and we get ready for the next one."
Ben Scrivens finished with 25 saves for the Oilers, who have lost three of their last four.
"That was a poor performance by all of us tonight, for reasons I'm not really sure," Edmonton forward Matt Hendricks said. "We just weren't executing and we didn't have the energy we needed to be the team we need to be to compete."
Oilers interim head coach Todd Nelson agreed his team was flat on the night.
"We played against a team that is good defensively and playing very well right now," he said. "They made us work for everything that we got, which wasn't much. We just didn't have any jump tonight."
After the loss a fan threw an Oilers jersey on the ice, which Scrivens picked up with his goalie stick and flipped back over the boards where it was caught by another spectator.
The Wild started the scoring midway through the first period as Fontaine tipped Christian Folin's point shot past Scrivens.
Minnesota made it 2-0 with 5 minutes left in the opening period as Niederreiter scored his 19th of the season on a big rebound from Mikko Koivu's shot.
The Wild scored again with 4 minutes remaining in the second as Thomas Vanek made a great cross-ice pass to Schroeder, who put the puck in the net before Scrivens could get across.
Edmonton only had 10 shots on Dubnyk through 40 minutes.
The game's first power play went to the Oilers in the third period, but the Wild killed it, extending a perfect short-handed streak to 30 for 30 going back to Jan. 20.
The Wild made it 4-0 with just over a minute to play as Zack Parise fed the puck from behind the net to Fontaine, who scored his seventh goal of the season.
NOTES: Minnesota came into the game with a 9-0-1 record in their previous 10 visits to Edmonton. ... Out of the lineup with injuries for the Wild were Jason Zucker (clavicle), Matt Cooke (sports hernia), Ryan Carter (upper body), Keith Ballard (head) and Jared Spurgeon (concussion). ... Out for Edmonton were Tyler Pitlick (lacerated spleen), Taylor Hall (leg), Nikita Nikitin (shoulder), Viktor Fasth (knee), Anton Lander (shoulder) and Jeff Petry (ribs).
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