Brandon Duhaime and the Wild quickly extinguished any early momentum the Boston Bruins had built Saturday night at Xcel Energy Center.
After Bruins winger David Pastrnak scored 2 minutes, 37 seconds into the first period on a power play, Wild winger Brandon Duhaime and Bruins center Jakub Lauko dropped the gloves, each earning five-minute majors after the tussle.
By coincidence or not, that seemed to shift all the momentum to the Wild, who beat the Bruins 3-2 for their third straight win and sixth straight victory on the Xcel Energy Center ice.
The Wild (15-13-4) scored the next three goals and outshot the Bruins (19-7-6), who were on the second half of a back to back, 35-21 on the night.
Joel Eriksson Ek knotted the game for the Wild, winning a battle in front of the net on the power play and poking the puck past Bruins goaltender Linus Ullmark 5 minutes, 57 seconds into the second period. It was his sixth power-play goal of the season.
Just 1 minute, 24 seconds later, Alex Goligoski delivered a nice feed to a streaking Kirill Kaprizov, who one-timed a shot past Ullmark to put the Wild up 2-1.
That remained the score until Pat Maroon delivered a perfect pass from behind the goal to Marcus Foligno, who fired a shot past Ullmark from the front of the net 3 minutes, 10 seconds into the third frame to put the Wild up 3-1.
Bruins center Morgan Geekie made things a little more interesting with his goal at 13:53, but the Wild controlled possession for most of the six remaining minutes to ice the game away.
Marc-Andre Fleury had 19 saves for the Wild. It was his 998th game and his 550th win.
