Wild's winning streak grows to seven games with win over San Jose

SAN JOSE, Calif. – The nine games left in the regular season will be significant, helping decide where the Wild finishes in the West Division.

But the team's fate is already sealed.

The Wild is going to the playoffs.

"It's nice to do it and not have to wait until the last week," captain Jared Spurgeon said.

A 6-3 win over the Sharks on Saturday night at SAP Center did the trick, making the Wild the third team in the NHL to punch its postseason ticket. Division rivals Vegas and Colorado are the others.

This is the eighth time over the past nine seasons the Wild has advanced, and its latest clincher comes during the team's best run of the year; the Wild has won a season-high seven in a row after sweeping this four-game road trip.

"It's important for any team that enters the playoffs to be playing at the top of their game," Ryan Suter said. "I don't think now's the time to take the foot off the gas."

The Wild got down to business quickly — scoring three goals on six shots.

On the game's first shot, 19 seconds after puck drop, Suter swooped into San Jose territory and wired a shot by goalie Martin Jones.

Then, after Kaapo Kahkonen made a clutch stop on a redirect by Marc-Edouard Vlasic, the Wild went the other way with Joel Eriksson Ek setting up Marcus Foligno for a shot he buried behind Jones at 12 minutes.

The goal was Foligno's second in the past three games, and Eriksson Ek's assist extended his career-long point streak to five games. Overall, their line with Jordan Greenway registered four goals and 10 points during the week.

With 2:17 to go in the first, Spurgeon added a third goal — jumping into the play to finish off a Ryan Hartman pass.

Jones was replaced by Josef Korenar to start the second, exiting with five saves. Korenar totaled 15 in relief, giving up two goals, the first in the second on a rebound deflected in by Kevin Fiala at 19:10 for his third goal during a four-game point streak. He and Spurgeon both had two points.

At the other end, the Sharks didn't get a puck by Kahkonen until 1:19 of the third, when Logan Couture swiped in a rebound.

Kirill Kaprizov answered back at 4:28 of the third on a power play. His team-leading 22nd goal pushed his goal streak to five games. The Wild's power play went 1-for-3, while San Jose didn't have a single chance.

The Sharks scored twice more before time ran out, on an Evander Kane backhand at 4:47 and on a rising shot from Joachim Blichfeld at 6:06. Nick Bonino, who also assisted on Kaprizov's goal, had an empty-net goal at 19:38.

BOXSCORE: Wild 6, San Jose 3

Kahkonen ended up with 27 saves in his second straight win. His 14 victories are the most by a Wild rookie goalie in team history.

"He's so calm and cool in the net," Foligno said.

Usually, the Wild doesn't find out whether it's playoff-bound until the final few days of the season.

In 2016, the team clinched after the second-to-last game. The two years before that, the Wild secured a berth with two games to go.

And last year, the team learned it'd be part of the NHL's 24-team postseason tournament after the regular season was suspended by the pandemic.

The team's stint in the playoff bubble was brief, with the Wild getting expelled in four games by Vancouver during a qualifying-round series.

But after a roster overhaul that dismantled the previous core and paved the way for a younger replacement, the Wild has turned into one of the NHL's most competitive clubs.

At 31-13-3 with 65 points, the Wild currently occupies third place in the West Division, but that could change.

The team is only one point behind the No. 2 Avalanche and five shy of the No. 1 Golden Knights.

"Yes, we did make the playoffs, which is a huge objective of ours starting the season," Foligno said. "But we still feel we can get higher and, hopefully, maybe catch a team or two. We feel like there's still work to be done."