NEW YORK _ The Wild came into Madison Square Garden on Thursday at the nadir of their season. On Wednesday, they fell out of the second wild-card spot as general manager Paul Fenton traded Charlie Coyle to the Bruins for Ryan Donato and a draft pick. Fenton said he was hoping for a "jump, a vault" out of the move, and on Thursday, at least, the Wild responded, momentarily stopping their slide and snapping out of their scoreless funk in a 4-1 victory over the Rangers.
It was the Wild's first win in their last six games.
The Wild were able to avoid going into the franchise record books for the wrong reason thanks to a first-period power-play goal from Jared Spurgeon.
Spurgeon shoved in a loose puck that way lying near a sprawled out Henrik Lundqvist after Lundqvist had made a commendable effort to stop a shot from Eric Staal. New Wild forward Ryan Donato picked up the secondary assist on the play. Spurgeon's 12th goal came at 15:04 in the first and ended the Wild's scoring drought at 171:04, 9:03 short of the longest scoring drought in franchise history, which was set in February 2002.
The Wild looked like they had a second goal less than a minute later when a shot from Brad Hunt on the point appeared to go clean through traffic and into the net. But the Rangers challenged the play, alleging Joel Eriksson Ek was offside entering the zone, and officials overturned the goal on replay.
The Rangers took advantage of the slumping Wild penalty kill to get on the board in the second period when Pavel Buchnevich had a clean shot from the right circle that trickled past Dubnyk at 5:06. Dubnyk got his pads on the initial shot, but the puck got past him and into the net. That marked the 16th goal the penalty kill has allowed in 14 games.
The Wild took the lead later in the period on a great individual play from Mikael Granlund. Granlund cleaned up a rebound off a shot from Greg Pateryn as he was falling down. Rangers defenseman Kevin Shattenkirk was hooking Granlund and the Wild would have gone on the power play had Spurgeon not scored.
The Rangers came out fast in the third period as Mika Zibanejad hit the post on the first shift. Around the 16-minute mark, Ryan Strome had a look at an open net off a rebound, but his shot went high.
Zach Parise provided an insurance goal to give the Wild some breathing room. The Wild likely should not have scored Parise's goal, which came as a direct result of a trip from Staal on the Rangers' Brady Skjei in the Rangers zone. The puck went right to Parise, who beat Lundqvist at 11:03. The Wild also killed a double minor penalty on the newbie Donato, and Jordan Greenway followed with an empty-net goal, capping a productive night from the Wild, something sorely missing of late.
