Kirill Kaprizov lit the lamp twice but the Minnesota Wild continued to struggle defensively as they were defeated by the Colorado Avalanche 6-3 on Monday night.
After former Gopher captain Ben Meyers opened the scoring with his first goal of the season 3:30 into the game, Kaprizov answered quickly, scoring his second goal of the season at 4:14 into the first period to tie the game at 1-1.
Kriss-Kross Kaprizov sauce 🚨#mnwild pic.twitter.com/paO3GaBpbY
— Minnesota Wild (@mnwild) October 18, 2022
Kaprizov scored again in the third period with assists going to Calen Addison and Mats Zuccarello but his offensive prowess wasn’t enough to save the Wild from their defensive issues.
After Marc-Andre Fleury allowed 11 goals in his first four periods of the season, the Wild turned to Filip Gustavsson for his first start in a Wild sweater. The results weren’t promising after the early goal to Meyers and a late-first period from Samuel Girard to give Colorado a 2-1 lead.
The Wild tied the game on a power play goal from Joel Eriksson Ek in the second period, but things got worse after Gustavsson misplayed a dump off the stick of Nathan MacKinnon. Mikko Rantanen casually tapped in the loose puck to put the Avalanche ahead 3-2 and Josh Manson’s goal 2:02 into the third period made it a 4-2 game.
Kaprizov scored his second goal of the night on a power play 4:17 into the third period but the Wild couldn’t find the equalizer.
After several rushes against Colorado goaltender Alexandar Georgiev, MacKinnon scored on a power play with 14:54 to go and Valeri Nichushkin added an empty-net goal to seal the victory for the Avalanche.
Addison had three assists for the Wild, who will look to break their three-game losing streak when they host the Vancouver Canucks on Thursday night.
