Kirill Kaprizov had a goal and an assist as the Minnesota Wild ended Los Angeles’ eight-game home winning streak by beating the Kings 3-1 on Monday night.
Matt Boldy and Ryan Hartman also scored, Marco Rossi had two assists and Filip Gustavsson made 23 saves for Minnesota (39-32-10, 88 points), which was outscored by a combined 13-3 in its previous two meetings with Los Angeles this season.
Blake Lizotte scored and Cam Talbot had 26 saves and an assist for the Kings (43-27-11, 97 points), who remain one point ahead of the Vegas Golden Knights for third place in the Pacific Division.
Los Angeles has one game left, on Thursday against the visiting Chicago Blackhawks, while Vegas has two games to go.
The Kings were trying to win nine straight at home for the first time since a their franchise-record, 12-game run at home in 1992-93.
Minnesota scored a power-play goal for the seventh straight game to take a 1-0 lead at 14:14 of the first period.
Boldy received a lateral pass from Rossi as he crossed the Los Angeles blue line with speed. He cut between defensemen Vladislav Gavrikov and Matt Roy before sliding the puck between Talbot’s pads for his 29th goal of the season.
After the Wild killed their second penalty of the first period, Alex Goligoski nearly scored coming out of the box.
Talbot came out of the crease to try and beat Goligoski to a long stretch pass, but Goligoski got to the puck first. Goligoski was forced to take the puck behind the net by Jordan Spence, however, and Trevor Moore then deflected Goligoski’s wrist shot over the wide-open net with 51 seconds left in the first period.
Minnesota failed to capitalize on two power plays in the second period, but Hartman scored at the end of a two-on-one rush with Kaprizov with five seconds left in the frame to stretch the lead to 2-0.
Kaprizov was credited with his 50th assist of the season on the play.
Kaprizov made it 3-0 at 8:25 of the third when he banked the puck off Talbot from below the goal line for his 45th goal of the season.
Lizotte denied Gustavsson his fourth shutout of the season when he scored with a wrist shot off the rush from just above the left circle to make it 3-1 at 14:36 of the third.
–Field Level Media