But a Minnesota native stole his thunder once the puck dropped.

Arizona center – and another former Wild player – Nick Bjugstad, who grew up playing hockey in Blaine, Minn., scored his second career hat trick in a 6-0 shutout of the Wild.

“It felt good,” Bjugstad said. “It had been a while since I scored. That first one, it felt pretty good.

“Sometimes it just goes in for you. It was one of those nights.”

Nick Bjugstad scored 13 goals in a Wild sweater a couple of seasons ago. (MHM Photo / Rick Olson)

For the Wild, it was “one of those nights” in a completely different way as Minnesota was shut out on home ice for the second time in less than a week, dropping their fourth consecutive game to make it eight losses in the past nine games. The loss led to a players-only meeting following the game.

As of Saturday’s game, Bjugstad skated in 659 career NHL games. He has one four-point game to his name, plus five other three-point games. His one other hat trick came with the Florida Panthers on March 6, 2018, against the Tampa Bay Lightning.

Bjugstad played in 101 games with the Wild in the 2020-21 and 2021-22 seasons. He scored 13 goals and 30 points wearing his home-state sweater.

He came into Saturday’s game with only six goals this season, his last tally coming Dec. 4 against Washington. But maybe the dam was just about to burst; he recorded eight shots on goal in the Jan. 11 game against Calgary but came up empty other than a single assist.

“You want to create volume,” Bjugstad said. “I’ve been in situations where I’ve been in some droughts. I just tried to stay even-keeled through all that. You just know eventually it’s going to go in.”

When Bjugstad completed his hat trick in the second period (with an assist from another former Wild player, Jason Zucker), hockey fans tossed a few hats onto the ice for the hometown player. There wasn’t much else to cheer about for the Wild faithful, other than the “t-shirt guy” pumping up the crowd with his hype moves.

As one would expect, the hat trick was all the more special for Bjugstad because it came in a building that he referred to as “the mecca” for him as a kid.

“I don’t really know how to put it in words,” Bjugstad said. “Yeah, it’s a fun one to have, and it’s a fun one to have with this team.”

PWHL Minnesota wraps up its first homestand, gets goals from alternate captains
One Minnesota professional hockey team still sits atop the league standings. That’s despite PWHL Minnesota (3-0-0-1) suffering its first loss of the season with a 3-2 overtime defeat at the hands of PWHL New York (2-1-2-0) on Sunday.

Roseville native and alternate captain Lee Stecklein scored her first goal of the season with a point shot that made it through traffic for a 1-0 lead in the first period. Another Twin Cities native, Kelly Pannek, of Plymouth, added to the lead with her first PWHL goal. Pannek’s tally started with her taking the puck into the zone, sliding it past two colliding New York players to get her all alone with the goaltender before firing her shot for a 2-0 lead in the first intermission.

PWHL Minnesota played its first overtime game on Sunday afternoon, against PWHL New York. (MHM Photo / Heather Rule)

“That was the best first period as a whole that we’ve had in the first, now four games,” Pannek, the other alternate captain, told Bally Sports North during the first intermission.

New York pressured more in the next two periods and eventually tied the game with a pair of power-play goals from Alex Carpenter and Jessie Eldridge, who scored with 10:49 remaining in regulation.

Special teams were a huge factor in the game. Minnesota had an early 5-on-3 advantage for nearly a full two minutes. They also had another power play in the third period with the chance to regain their two-goal lead. The puck possession and offensive zone time were there, but the conversion was not.

“It’s just a little lack of finish,” said Minnesota coach Ken Klee. “We’re getting good looks.

“You get enough good looks, you’re going to score goals.”

Minnesota is 0-for-8 on the power play so far this season, standing as the only team that hasn’t cashed in on the power play.

Minnesota had a couple of prime chances to win the game in the 3-on-3 overtime, too. Taylor Heise just missed popping the puck over the goal line right in front. Then Grace Zumwinkle was hauled down on a scoring chance and was awarded a penalty shot. She couldn’t convert with 1:40 left in OT. Then 41 seconds later, the game was over when New York’s Emma Woods fired a shot that deflected high on the blocker side to beat Minnesota goaltender Maddie Rooney.

New York celebrated handing Minnesota its first loss of the season.

“They obviously came out hot,” Woods said. “But I think we just stayed in the game and battled. They’re a fast team and very skilled. We matched that tonight. It felt good to take them out of the win column for a bit.”

There’s still plenty to be excited about with PWHL Minnesota as the season is now a couple of weeks old. Minnesota has also scored first in all four of its games and has yet to allow a first-period goal this season while scoring six goals of their own in the first frame.

Minnesota still remains the only PWHL to win on home ice thus far. Minnesota leads the PWHL in points with 10; it’s three points for a regulation victory, two points for an overtime victory and one point for an overtime loss.

Minnesota opened the season in Boston before playing their last three at Xcel Energy Center. After a record-breaking crowd for a professional women’s hockey game of 13,316 for the home opener, Minnesota drew 4,707 fans for Wednesday night’s game before another solid 7,951 on Sunday afternoon, closely filling up the lower bowl.

“Every game we’ve played here, we’ve had a fantastic crowd,” said Minnesota captain Kendall Coyne Schofield. “Definitely have the best crowd in the league, that’s for sure. They showed up.”

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Darcy Kuemper takes his game to another level

ST. PAUL – Former Minnesota Wild player Darcy Kuemper, now with the Arizona Coyotes, didn’t become one of the top goaltenders in the National Hockey League overnight.

Far from it.

“He wants to be a No. 1 goalie,” said Arizona Coyotes coach Rick Tocchet. “He’s been a back-up for eight years.”

Darcy Kuemper (Photo by Norm Hall/NHLI via Getty Images)

Yes, Kuemper’s rise to the top of the goaltending heap in the NHL came with many seasons playing second fiddle to teammates. The 2009 sixth-round Wild draft pick made 89 starts (played in 102 games) for the Wild, going 41-34-14 with a 2.60 GAA and .910 save percentage from 2012-17. Kuemper played six, 26, 31, 21 and 18 games a season across his five seasons with the Wild, playing back-up to the likes of Niklas Backstrom, Ilya Bryzgalov and Devan Dubnyk.

Kuemper played for Los Angeles, again in a back-up role, before being shipped to the Coyotes in February 2018.

Kuemper didn’t start Thursday’s game against his former team in St. Paul, a 3-2 win for the Wild, but his numbers so far have been stellar. He’s 8-5-0 with a 1.99 GAA and .931 save percentage. Going into Thursday night’s games, his GAA was the best in the Western Conference and second in the NHL behind Thomas Greiss (7-1-0 in 9 games for the New York Islanders). Kuemper’s save percentage is tied for third in the league.

His mindset is to work hard and keep improving his game, he said.

“I’ve gotten some good opportunity here to play a lot,” Kuemper said. “Have guys really committed to playing defense in front of me, so it’s just kind of a good recipe for success.”

He’s allowed just 26 goals, has a shutout against Colorado (33 saves) and only allowed 4 goals in a game once this season – in that 4-3 loss to the Wild (7-11-1) on Saturday.

“I’m sure Kemps still would like to beat us,” Wild coach Bruce Boudreau told the traveling media following Saturday’s game. “His last year, we probably weren’t as good to him as we should’ve been. He’s gone and become one of the best goalies in the league numbers-wise.”

So what’s changed? Well, things started to turn around for Kuemper last season when he saw an opportunity. Kuemper started the season in familiar territory, once again a back-up to Antti Raanta, who took the loss on Thursday. But Kuemper needed to step up after Raanta sustained a season-ending injury in late November (Raanta’s last game that season was a 4-3 Coyotes win in Minnesota.).

“I love playing, so it’s a lot of fun,” Kuemper said. “I just cherish the opportunity to be out there as much as I can.”

Suddenly vaulted into the top spot, Kuemper struggled some, losing eight-of-nine games from mid-November through December. But then something clicked. Kuemper turned the calendar to 2019 in January and he turned to a winning page on his hockey performance.

Former Wild goaltender Darcy Kuemper makes one of his 29 saves in Minnesota’s 2-1 win over the New York Rangers on March 13, 2014 at the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul. (MHM Photo / Jeff Wegge)

That’s when Tocchet saw the change, too, in Kuemper’s mentality.

“He wanted to talk to the general manager… he (Kuemper) didn’t like his play,” Tocchet said. “He (Kuemper) says, ‘if I don’t play, we can’t win.’

“Since that day, he’s been arguably the top two, three goalies in the league. It’s a strong mentality that he found in himself. There was another level, and he found it.”

Kuemper rattled off a seven-game winning streak starting in mid-February, winning 9-out-of-10 games into March. He went 13 games in a row from March 23 to Oct. 22 allowing two goals or less in a game, setting a new Coyotes franchise record; it was also the 12th longest such stretch in NHL history. Since Jan. 6, only Sergei Bobrovsky (with Columbus last season and Florida this year) has more shutouts (eight) in the NHL than Kuemper (six).

He helped put his team into the playoff conversation before finishing fourth in the Pacific Division. Kuemper had a career year last season, going 27-20-8 in 55 games with a 2.33 GAA and .925 save percentage with a career-high five shutouts, including a 4-0, 39-save victory against the Wild on March 31. The now-29-year-old set career marks in games played, starts, wins, save percentage, shots faced and saves.

That’s something that shouldn’t be all too surprising for a perennial back-up who finally found some playing time in the No. 1 spotlight.

“The consistency of his game has been terrific,” Tocchet said.

Last year’s success has spilled over to the 2019-20 campaign. After a couple early losses, Kuemper won his next four starts and seven-of-his-next-eight games, a stretch where he allowed just 14 goals. Kuemper’s next game will be No. 200 in the NHL, which includes 182 starts. He’s a career 88-66-27 with 17 shutouts.

But after giving up those four goals to his former team on his home ice, Kuemper did not get the nod in St. Paul. In the Arizona game, it appeared as though Kuemper was chirping his former team during that game, but he brushed it off when asked about it a few days later after Thursday’s morning skate.

“There honestly wasn’t really much going on,” Kuemper said. “I don’t know how that really became a story. It just was another game.”

That’s how he saw Thursday’s re-match, too. A couple years removed, and with plenty of turnover in the Wild dressing room as well, coming back to his roots in Minnesota isn’t that big of a deal to Kuemper. Instead, it’s “just another game” with a chance for an important two points on the line.

For the second-place Coyotes (11-7-2), Kuemper isn’t the only one getting it done. Nick Schmaltz leads the way with 4 goals and 15 points. And Tocchet has the ability to rely on two solid goaltenders; Raanta is 3-2-2.

“It’s always a lot more fun when the team’s having success,” Kuemper said. “It’s still early in the season, but we’re pretty happy with our start. We know there are things we’ve got to keep working on and a lot of games ahead of us. But it’s been a good start. We’ve just got to keep building off it.” 

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A positive spin on Wild’s loss heading into All-Star break

St. Paul – Following a 2-1, come-from-ahead, shootout loss to the Arizona Coyotes, this could be another in what has become a series of Minnesota Wild stories detailing the team’s struggles to put pucks in the net. But that’s not the case.

I could bore you with the fact that the Wild had been held scoreless in five consecutive periods at home before Charlie Coyle’s third-period goal on Monday night. And I won’t mention that Coyle’s goal was just Minnesota’s fourth in its past four games at Xcel Energy Center.

I could point out the obvious that the Wild have lost all five home games in calendar year 2016 (0-3-2) marking just the third winless month at the ‘X’ in franchise history (March 2001, December 2001).

Let’s also forget Minnesota has managed just 23 goals in 13 games overall (1.77 per game) in the new year.

I’m even going to leave out the continuing struggles of “top liners” Mikael Granlund and Jason Pominville who are doing Zach Parise no favors whatsoever. You certainly won’t see Minnesota coach Mike Yeo address it by saying, “It’s not like we have anybody else that’s exactly lighting it up right now. We’re talking about some major, major slumps.”

You won’t read here about how Coyle’s goal midway through the third period nearly stood up as the game winner. That was until Wild goaltender Devan Dubnyk mishandled a puck behind his own net with his team on a power play.

Arizona’s Tobias Reider capitalized on the turnover and quickly fed teammate Antoine Vermette whose shot from the right circle clipped the diving Jared Spurgeon before landing in the vacated Minnesota net with 1:13 to play in regulation. Mum’s the word on that, however.

You’ll have to look elsewhere to learn how penalties led to an entire overtime without 3-on-3 hockey and how a questionable goaltender interference call cost the Coyotes what would have been an overtime winner. But it didn’t matter as Arizona’s Anthony Duclair scored the lone shootout goal of the night giving the Coyotes an improbable 2-1 win.

Nope, tonight is going to be all about the positives.

Outside of his late-game mishap, Devan Dubnyk was very good in his All-Star game tune-up. After seeing little action through two periods, Dubnyk made 17 of his 23 saves in the final period alone, including a spectacular glove save on Arizona’s Viktor Tikhonov with 8:53 to go.

“I think we played a good game, a game that we should have won.” Dubnyk said. “That’s the way you have to look at it, I think.”

That Dubnyk had little to do through 40 minutes was a credit to a suffocating Minnesota defense which limited the Coyotes to just six shots entering the third period. Coyle’s 13th goal of the season is a career high and gives him a three-game goal streak.

“I thought we played okay,” Parise said. “I didn’t think we played a bad game, I mean, we just couldn’t get a second goal.”

Eight of Minnesota’s 10 January losses have been by one goal including one in overtime and two by shootout.

“It’s not like we’re losing by three, four goals right now,” Yeo said. “We’ve got guys who have scored before, we’re not scoring right now, and we’re creating chances but the puck’s not going in.”

Minnesota has points in 17 of its 25 home contests this season in compiling a 14-8-3 record in St. Paul. Entering the All-Star break, the Wild is in a much better position than a year ago as their 55 points is nine more than 2015 when the team was on the outside looking in as far as the playoffs were concerned.

“I’m certainly not going to point to excuses of bad luck or misfortune or whatever,” Yeo said. “It’s in our control, we’ve got a group that’s good enough to win and we’re giving ourselves a chance but we’re not grabbing it.”

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Arizona, Wild power play each come up empty in Minnesota win.

It wasn’t pretty, especially early, but the Minnesota Wild shook off the rust to halt its losing streak at two. Playing just its fifth game in 15 days the Wild overcame a slow start to net a pair of second period goals which proved to be more than enough for red-hot goaltender Darcy Kuemper who shut out the visiting Arizona (don’t-call-us-Phoenix) Coyotes 2-0 on Thursday night at Xcel Energy Center.

Kuemper turned aside all 26 Arizona shots he faced to earn his league-leading third shutout of the season while defenseman Jared Spurgeon sparked the offense with assists on goals by Charlie Coyle and Jason Pominville.

The Wild needed Kuemper to be good, particularly in a first period when Minnesota’s turnovers and defensive breakdowns led to the Coyotes’ most serious threats of the night. The effects of the extensive downtime between games were evident.

“You can just tell, we’re not quite there right now,” Wild coach Mike Yeo said of his team’s sluggish start. “Just execution, I thought we were very reactive in the first period where usually we’re a team that’s dictating the pace.”

“At the start of the game it was kind of a little sloppy,” Pominville said. “You could tell that we hadn’t played in a little while.”

After nearly missing the start of training camp in a contract dispute, Kuemper has been Minnesota’s best player through the season’s first two weeks. Kuemper, who picked up his third shutout in his last six home starts dating back to last season, now sits at 3-1-0 this season with a 0.50 GAA and a .980 SV%.

“What I really liked is just how he’s following the play,” Yeo said of his goaltender. “That’s a team (Arizona) that does a great job with their net-front presence and also getting pucks in from the blue line with a lot of bodies in front.

“I thought he was making himself big in those instances.”

Having survived the rough opening period, Minnesota came out of the gate in the second with noticeably more energy and it paid off early with two goals in less than three minutes beginning with Coyle’s slick deflection of a Spurgeon shot at 2:53. The goal is the second of the season for Coyle who signed a 5-year, $16 million contract extension on Wednesday.

“I like the way we came out in the second period,” Yeo said. “We started to get more physically engaged in the game, we started to pressure more and we started to attack more. Once that happened I felt we started to get some momentum.”

Pominville notched his second of the year at 5:27 with a blast that Coyotes’ goaltender Mike Smith said hit one of his defensemen on its way in. Smith finished with 27 saves on 29 Minnesota shots.

The Wild had ample opportunity to extend its lead when Arizona was called for three penalties in the second half of the middle stanza. But Minnesota’s well-documented power-play woes this season continued to the tune of 0 for 3 on the night and a total of three shots on goal.

Yeo acknowledged the team’s frustration with the power play, which is now 0 for 19 through five games, but said it’s up to him to find the right combinations. He added his players deserve credit for not allowing their power-play frustrations affect their next shift.

“That’s not always easy to push that aside but they’re focused on the bigger goal and that’s winning the hockey game,” Yeo said. “But there’s no question that I have to figure that out. Once we do, we’ll be a pretty dangerous team.”

The Arizona game began a stretch of six games in nine days for Minnesota which hosts the Tampa Bay Lightning on Saturday night at Xcel Energy Center. It’s a workload both players and staff are looking forward to.

“It was good to win that game; we did a lot of good things,” Yeo said. “But getting these games is going to be really important for us just to get up to game speed.”

“It’ll be nice here to play more games, get into a little bit more of a rhythm,” Pominville said. “A lot of time off is fun to rest the body but we want to play. Practice is fun, but not that fun.”

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