Tkachuk cut it to 2-1 at 2:18 of the second period, putting his own rebound in at the side of the net.<\/p>\n
That ended up being all Florida could put past Wallstedt.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were just slower than they were,\u201d Panthers coach Paul Maurice said. \u201cWe were slow in all parts of our game. But (Minnesota) was quick in how they moved the puck, their feet. We were just sluggish. There were two or three reads that we normally don\u2019t miss and they are in the back of our net. Being back on your heels early in your home opener puts attention on your game.\u201d<\/p>\n
Minnesota soon responded to make it 3-1 at 5:00 when Kaprizov scored with a wrist shot from the right circle off a cross-ice feed from Boldy.<\/p>\n
Kaprizov capped the hat trick by scoring into an empty net with 1:04 remaining for the 4-1 final.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s an unbelievable team over there,\u201d Boldy said of the Panthers. \u201cThey are missing some guys, but that is a team that has won. Their core hasn\u2019t changed much. You want to measure yourself against them. To be able to compare ourselves to them is huge.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Panthers went 0-for-5 on the power play and are 1-for-28 this season.<\/p>\n
NOTES: Kaprizov scored his seventh career hat trick and is two behind Marian Gaborik<\/a> (nine) for the most in Wild history. He also had his fifth four-point game, tying Mats Zuccarello<\/a> and Boldy for second-most in Minnesota history, behind Gaborik (seven). \u2026 Wild forward Rieger Lorenz<\/a> played 7:12 and was minus-1 in his NHL debut. \u2026 Panthers defenseman Aaron Ekblad<\/a> became the franchise leader in games played at 807, breaking a tie with injured captain Aleksander Barkov<\/a>.\u00a0Ekblad returned after missing two games on paternity leave, finishing minus-1 with three shots on goal in 21:19 of ice time. \u2026 Florida forward Eetu Luostarinen<\/a> left the game midway through the third period after taking a shot off the leg. Maurice said Luostarinen would be evaluated on Sunday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tkachuk cut it to 2-1 at 2:18 of the second period, putting his own rebound in at the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":878539,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99],"class_list":["post-878538","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/878538","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=878538"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/878538\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/878539"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=878538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=878538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=878538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}