Colorado Avalanche vs Minnesota Wild Box Score on Apr 07, 2021

Kevin Fiala scored his first career hat trick and also had an assist as the Minnesota Wild snapped Colorado's 15-game point-streak with an 8-3 victory on Wednesday night in Saint Paul, Minn.

Wild rookie Kirill Kaprizov added two goals and an assist. Luke Johnson, Ryan Hartman and Joel Eriksson Ek also scored goals and Jared Spurgeon and Victor Rask each had three assists for Minnesota, which moved within two points of the second-place Vegas Golden Knights in the West Division.

The eight-goal game was the fifth in Wild history, matching the franchise record.

Minnesota's Cam Talbot made 29 saves to improve to 6-1-1 in his last eight starts.

Nathan MacKinnon and Mikko Rantanen each had a goal and an assist, Andre Burakovsky added a goal and Cale Makar had two assists for Colorado. The Avalanche had a five-game winning streak snapped and failed to gain a point in a game for the first time since a 3-2 home loss to the Arizona Coyotes on March 8.

The 15-game point streak (13-0-2) was one off the franchise record set from Dec. 27, 2000 to Jan. 30, 2001.

Philipp Grubauer stopped just 11 of 18 shots before being pulled with 12:42 remaining for Jonas Johansson, who made one save. The loss snapped a personal- and franchise-record 13-game point streak for Grubauer, who went 12-0-1 during that span.

Minnesota, which had a franchise-record, 11-game home winning streak snapped by the Avalanche 5-4 on Monday, sandwiched power-play goals by Kaprizov and Fiala around the first career NHL goal by Johnson to build a 3-0 lead in the first period. Colorado managed just four shots on goal in the opening 20 minutes.

MacKinnon cut it to 3-1 just 34 seconds into the second period with his 15th goal of the season, but Hartman answered a little over four minutes later. Colorado closed within 4-3 later in the period on goals by Burakovsky and Rantanen, but Kaprizov upped the margin to 5-3 later in the period.

The Wild then blew the game open with three goals in the first 7:56 of the third period, two of them by Fiala and another by Eriksson Ek.

--Field Level Media