Takeaways: Wild end five-game losing streak by beating Canucks 5-2

A five-game losing streak — the past four on home ice — hovered over the Wild like a candy corn hangover Saturday night at Grand Casino Arena.

The visiting Vancouver Canucks were shorthanded the night after Halloween without a half-dozen injured regulars, including superstar defenseman Quinn Hughes, and seemed like the perfect foil for the Wild to get back on track.

It wasn’t easy. The Canucks muddied the waters with an effective defensive style before the Wild broke away in the third period and escaped with a 5-2 victory.

Vladimir Tarasenko scored a goal and added two assists for the Wild before an announced crowd of 17,216. Drew O’Connor had both goals for Vancouver, which had a 28-27 edge in shots on goal.

“You need to ... feel poise,“ Tarasenko said. ”The games we lost before, some games we had very good moments. We’re improving every game, and it’s nice to get a win obviously, but it’s important to take the momentum with us.“

Wild captain Jared Spurgeon led a players-only meeting on Halloween morning where the team’s leaders had a chance for pep talks.

“Where I give Spurg a lot of credit, was that it wasn’t a random meeting after a game, right?” Wild coach John Hynes said. “He felt that the team needed to have a discussion with themselves. It had a lot of substance to it.

Said Vinnie Hinostroza, who scored his first goal of the season Saturday: “We had a great meeting ... We really talked about things. We know how special this group is. Every piece of the puzzle is there, we just got to put it together.”

The Wild scored the only goal of the first period after what looked like a harmless power-play rush. Matt Boldy’s head-man attempt was pinballed by two defenders but popped up knee-high to Joel Eriksson Ek. He batted it toward the goal and Tarasenko swooped in from the left wing, corralled the puck and backhanded it past Canucks goalie Thatcher Demko with four minutes remaining in the period.

O’Connor tied it 5:34 into the second period, converting a MacKenzie MacEachern rebound on a 3-on-2 break that started after Wild defenseman Zeev Buium got caught being a bit too fancy in his offensive zone.

Marco Rossi restored the one-goal edge eight minutes later, popping in the rebound of Tarasenko’s right point shot at 13:49. Rossi, who won a faceoff to start the play, extended his point-scoring streak to five games (two goals, five assists).

“Puck bounces the last couple games [weren’t] really on our side,” Rossi said. “And the puck bounces today [were] on our side, and that makes a huge difference.”

“The the lanes just kind of opened up for me there,” Hinostroza said of his end-to-end rush. “I’ve been feeling pretty good lately with my skating. I have to use that more to my advantage sometimes. But I don’t think I’ve done that for a while.”

Demko mishandled Jonas Brodin’s shot from a sharp angle 90 seconds later it banked off the Vancouver goalie and into the net, making the score 4-1.

O’Connor’s second goal, at the seven-minute mark, was on a right side 40-foot wrist shot that eluded the glove of an unscreened Gustavsson.

Demko came out for an extra attacker with four minutes remaining in the game, and Wild center Ryan Hartman hit the empty net on a 170-footer from beside his own goalie at 16:43 to make the final 5-2.

The Canucks played without Hughes, their captain, who won the Norris Trophy as the NHL’s top defenseman two seasons ago; he has a lower body injury.

Also on the injury list for the Canucks were forwards Filip Chytil, Teddy Blueger, Jonathan Lekkerimaki and Nils Hoglander; and defensemen Derek Forbort, Victor Mancini and Guillaume Brisebois.

“There’s some things we need to clean up defensively, help [Demko] out a little bit more,” O’Connor said. “He’s been so solid for us all year, so I don’t think we did a good enough job helping him out tonight.”

Hynes scratched rookie center Danila Yurov, who has one goal in 10 games and is a minus-6 while averaging slightly less than 10 minutes time on ice. Ben Jones replaced Yurov in the lineup and played his 32^nd NHL game; he’s still without a goal or an assist.

The Wild (4-6-3) finish a six-game homestand when they play host to Nashville on Tuesday.

“Every team I’ve been on has gone through something like this,” Hinostroza said. “Whether it’s later in the season or the middle of the season ... it just so happens to be right at the beginning, when we have high expectations.