ELMONT, N.Y. — Kirill Kaprizov, Joel Eriksson Ek and Matt Boldy each had a goal and an assist, and the Minnesota Wild hung on to beat the New York Islanders 4-3 for their fifth straight win.
Rookie Brandon Duhamie also scored for Minnesota, and Matt Dumba had two assists to help the Wild earn at least a point for the ninth straight game (8-0-1). Winger Kevin Fiala continued his torrid scoring pace with an assist, picking up at least one point in his last 11 games.
Backup goaltender Kaapo Kahkonen stopped 40 shots to improve to 10-2-2 this season.
Minnesota native Brock Nelson, Ross Johnston and Oliver Wahlstrom scored for New York, which has lost two straight and three of four.
Ilya Sorokin finished with 17 saves as the Islanders remained a daunting 17 points behind Boston for the second wild card in the Eastern Conference.
A win is a win, but Sunday night's victory did not come easy. New York outshot Minnesota 14-6 in the second period and 18-5 in the third to finish with a season-high 43 shots on goal, and put intense pressure on the Wild after pulling the goalie in the closing minutes.
"I mean, you go on these winning streaks we've been on, and I think maybe when we lost some games we deserved to win. … (But) I don't really know if we if we deserved to win that game with those two periods we played at the end," Eriksson Ek told NHL.com. "But that's just how it is sometimes. You just got to try to grind out and know that we have to be better to keep winning games."
Winger Mats Zuccarello had his 10-game point streak end. He scored 18 points (five goals, 13 assists) in his run and notched multiple points in a Wild record six consecutive games.
It was the Wild's first game on the ice of New York's new and swanky UBS Arena.
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