Filip Gustavsson made 27 saves and scored an empty-net goal as the Minnesota Wild won 4-1 to spoil the St. Louis Blues’ home opener on Tuesday.
Gustavsson scored with 8.1 seconds left to ice the game, flipping the puck in the air over all three lines and seeing it roll the last stretch into the net. It was the first goalie goal in franchise history.
Ryan Hartman, Jakub Lauko and Marco Rossi scored earlier for the Wild, and Karill Kaprizov had two assists.
The Wild snapped a two-game losing streak despite playing without center Joel Eriksson Ek (broken nose) and defenseman Jared Spurgeon (lower-body injury).
Mathieu Joseph scored and Jordan Binnington made 23 saves for the Blues, who lost their second straight game.
Minnesota converted the first power-play opportunity of the game to take a 1-0 lead 3:50 into the game. Brock Faber fed Kaprizov, who cut to middle, drew three defenders, then slipped puck to Hartman cutting behind the defense for a clean break-in.
The Blues got their first power-play chance late in the period, but the Wild prevented them from putting a shot on goal.
The best St. Louis scoring chance of the first period came in the final seconds when Robert Thomas misfired from point-blank range after getting a behind-the-back pass from Jordan Kyrou.
The Blues experienced a disastrous outcome on their second man advantage.
First they allowed a short-handed goal when Lauko scored on a breakaway with 7:52 left in the middle period. Marat Khusnutdinov sent a lead pass beyond Kyrou to Lauko, who put the Wild up 2-0 on just their fifth shot of the game.
Later in that power play, Kyrou scored from outside the left post, only to see it waved off because the officials had whistled the play dead.
The missed opportunities kept coming for the Blues. Colton Parayko couldn’t tap in Nick Leddy’s backdoor pass to the right post, and then Ryan Suter’s shot from the left point beat Gustavsson just after the period ended.
Minnesota made it 3-0 just 46 seconds into the third period by turning Leddy’s turnover into Rossi’s weak-side conversion.
Joseph put the Blues on the board midway through the third period by scoring from the right circle.
–Field Level Media
