Jared Spurgeon scored twice for the Minnesota Wild in a 3-0 victory over the Vancouver Canucks to lead their qualifying series Sunday.
Spurgeon produced one of them, plus an empty-netter, and Kevin Fiala also scored for the Wild.
Minnesota starter Alex Stalock’s first career playoff victory was a 28-save shutout. Eric Staal assisted on a pair of Wild goals.
Minnesota outshot Vancouver 30-27, didn’t give up the middle lane to the Canucks and allowed Vancouver few clean entries over the Wild’s blue-line.
The Canucks mustered just four shots on goal in the third period and none on a late power play.
In the first playoff start of his nine-year career, Vancouver’s Jacob Markstrom’s stopped 28 shots in the loss. Matt Dumba raised his fist on the Wild’s bench during both the Canadian and American national anthems Sunday.
The Regina defenseman, who is half-Filipino, clarified earlier in the day he intends to do that for the rest of the NHL’s restart from the COVID-19 pandemic in homage to former Wild forward J.T. Brown.
Brown did the same during the « Star Spangled Banner » in 2017 as a member of the Tampa Bay Lightning to protest police brutality and racism.
With the NHL’s blessing, Dumba made a speech at Rogers Place centre ice stressing the need for social and racial justice prior to Saturday’s match between the Edmonton Oilers and Chicago.
The Wild haven’t won a playoff series since 2015, which was also the last year the Canucks saw the post-season.
Minnesota led halfway through the second period when Staal fed Spurgeon a cross-ice pass from the boards.
The defenseman from Edmonton whipped a low shot under both the left leg of a diving Alex Edler and Markstrom’s left pad.
Three seconds into an Edler tripping penalty, Fiala scored from the high slot at 2:50 of the first period.
Markstrom got a piece of Fiala’s snapshot, but not enough as the puck trickled behind him.
Parise’s assist on Fiala’s goal provided him the all-time franchise playoff record of 18. The 36-year-old Minnesotan also holds Wild playoff records in goals (14) and points (32).
Markstrom was summoned to the bench on a pending holding penalty to Parise, but a sixth Canuck prematurely jumped in the ice to negate the man advantage. Vancouver’s Micheal Ferland and Minnesota’s Marcus Foligno fought less than two minutes after the opening faceoff.
Unlike Scotiabank Arena in Toronto’s Eastern Conference hub tournament, fake crowd noise isn’t pumped into Edmonton’s empty Rogers Place.
