Kirill Kaprizov scored a pair of power-play goals and the visiting Minnesota Wild scored the final four goals of the game en route to a 4–1 victory over the Anaheim Ducks on Wednesday night, Nov. 9.
Matt Dumba and Joseph Cramarossa also scored for Minnesota, which extended its win streak against the Ducks to 11 games. Filip Gustavsson made 31 saves for his first win in four decisions this season.
Pavol Regenda scored his first NHL goal for Anaheim. John Gibson finished with 35 saves.
Following a scoreless first period that saw Minnesota’s Joel Eriksson Ek backhand a shot off the right post that slid across the front of the goal line behind Gibson and out, Anaheim appeared to take a 1–0 lead early in the second period on a lacrosse-style backhand goal by Trevor Zegras. But the goal was later taken off the scoreboard when the Wild successfully challenged that Ducks defenseman Dmitry Kulikov was offside earlier on the play.
Regenda, playing in his sixth NHL game, then gave the Ducks a 1–0 lead at the 13:24 mark of the middle period. He fired a snap shot from the high slot off the stick of defenseman Calen Addison past Gustavsson’s glove side for his first career goal.
Minnesota tied it at the 16:37 mark on a power-play goal by Kaprizov, snapping a 159-minute, 45-second goalless drought for the Wild in the process. Matt Boldy fired a shot from the right point that Kaprizov redirected in off the hip of Kulikov and inside the right post.
Dumba gave Minnesota a 2–1 lead early in the third period when he roofed Connor Dewar’s pass from the left corner for his first goal of the season.
The Wild, taking advantage of a five-on-three power play, made it 3–1 less than two minutes later on Kaprizov’s 10th goal of the season. Mats Zuccarello and Kaprizov set up behind the goal and passed the puck back and forth before Kaprizov quickly tucked in a shot around the right post for his fifth power-play goal of the season.
Cramarossa then extended the lead to 4–1 with his first goal since Feb. 14, 2017, when he was playing for Anaheim against Minnesota.
Kaprizov is a member of the Russian national hockey team and tied as leading scorer at the 2017 World Junior Championship with nine goals and three assists in 12 games—winning the bronze medals over Finland.
He was also the youngest Russian athlete on the gold medal-winning team at the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea—scoring the overtime golden goal in the gold medal match over Germany to capture the first Russian ice hockey gold since since 1992, and finished tied for the most goals throughout the Olympics with five.
Kaprizov is a Russian Orthodox Christian and godfather to his former CSKA Moscow teammate Nikita Nester’s son, Kirill Nesterov.
