Minnesota Wild beats St. Louis Blues 8-5 after near goalie fight
Linesmen prevent Jordan Binnington #50 of the St. Louis Blues and Marc-Andre Fleury #29 of the Minnesota Wild from fighting at the Enterprise Center on March 15, 2023 in St. Louis, Missouri. ((Photo by Scott Rovak/NHLI via Getty Images))
MINNEAPOLIS (FOX 9) - The Minnesota Wild is one of the hottest teams in the NHL, and they’re managing to stay that way despite being without their best player.
The Wild beat the St. Louis Blues 8-5 Wednesday night to improve to 39-21-8 on the season, and stay in the No. 4 spot in the Western Conference with 14 regular season games to play. The Wild has now scored 17 goals in three games without Kirill Kaprizov, who’s out for about a month with a lower body injury.
The Wild got goals from seven different players Wednesday night – two from Ryan Hartman, and others from Joel Eriksson Ek, John Klingberg, Oskar Sundqvist, Mason Shaw, Alex Goligoski and Ryan Reaves.
And we nearly got a goalie fight between Jordan Binnington and Marc-Andre Fleury. Hartman scored in the second period, and skated across the crease after. Binnington took exception, and went after Hartman while the Wild was celebrating the goal.
Fleury left his post, skated down the ice and was ready to throw down with Binnington in defense of his teammate.
"I saw him jump there and punch one of the guys so I felt that was my guy I had to take care of," Fleury said postgame. "I crossed the ice and took off my helmet, so I think I wanted it."
"Old school hockey," Wild coach Dean Evason said. "You never want to see that, but you certainly want to see teammates sticking together.''
And it all came with Ric Flair in the building.
The Wild is now 11-0-3 in its last 14 games, a franchise record point streak, and the eight goals matches a team record for tallies in a game.
The Wild is back home Saturday afternoon to host the Boston Bruins.