Minnesota
Minnesota Wild top defending champion Golden Knights 5-3 in Vegas
LAS VEGAS (AP) — Joel Eriksson Ek scored twice and the Minnesota Wild beat the Vegas Golden Knights 5-3 on Monday night for their third straight win.
Mats Zuccarello, Marco Rossi and Matt Boldy also scored to help Minnesota win for the sixth time in eight games. Filip Gustavsson made 27 saves.
Jonathan Marchessault, Michael Amadio and Mark Stone scored for Vegas, while Adin Hill stopped 24 shots.
One night after the Super Bowl became the most-watched program in television history up the road at Allegiant Stadium, a sellout crowd of 18,207 inside T-Mobile Arena saw the defending champion Golden Knights lose just their third home game in 2024.
“The management of the puck to set our game up to spend a lot of time in the offensive zone was really strong,” Minnesota coach John Hynes said. “So it’s great to get the two points. But the thing I’m most encouraged about is the process of the last two games, the style of game and commitment that it’s going to take to be able to win down the stretch.”
With the game tied at 2-all, the Wild retook the lead when Rossi punched in a rebound after Hill made an initial save and thought he had the rebound when it dropped out of his glove, and the puck bounced into the crease. Boldy made it a two-goal game 61 seconds later when he tapped in a floater from the goal line.
“I was thinking just throw it to the net, to be honest,” Boldy said. “It wasn’t much to it, just got lucky.”
The loss spoiled Vegas defenseman Alex Pietrangelo’s 1,000th career game. Pietrangelo had two assists to become the sixth defenseman in NHL history to record multiple assists in his 1,000th career game. The two-time Stanley Cup champion was celebrated before the game.
Marchessault became just the ninth player in NHL history to score in under 30 seconds in consecutive contests when his chip shot from the goal line clipped Minnesota defenseman Brock Faber’s skate and dropped behind Gustavsson just 22 seconds into the game.
Marchessault scored 19 seconds into a 3-2 win at Arizona last Thursday.
The Wild took advantage of a 5-on-3 power play midway through the first when Zuccarello one-timed a pass from Kirill Kaprizov to tie the score. Minnesota took the lead less than two minutes later when Eriksson Ek tapped a rebound over Hill’s right leg from in front of the crease.
Amadio scored his 50th career goal when he ripped a shot past Gustavsson from the top of the right circle to tie the score late in the first.
After a scoreless second, things heated up in the final period when the Wild scored their back-to-back goals nearly a minute apart.
Stone cut the lead to one shortly thereafter when his blast from the top of the right circle blew past Gustavsson, but Eriksson Ek’s empty-net goal provided the final margin.
“I thought we mismanaged pucks between the blues after the first five minutes,” Vegas coach Bruce Cassidy said. “I’m not making excuses but I was concerned today about how our energy level would be. It started out well and then some of the guys we rely on didn’t quite have it tonight either.”
UP NEXT
Wild: Visit Arizona on Wednesday
Golden Knights: Host Carolina on Saturday
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AP NHL: https://apnews.com/hub/NHL
Meteorological summer kicks off June 1 and lasts through August. So, is the heat here to stay in Minnesota?
With temperatures near 90 lately, summer is on everyone’s mind. The outlook from the Climate Prediction Center says it’s a toss-up when it comes to temperatures over the three-month season.
“We’re going into an El Niño, and probably a very strong one, or a super El Niño, as they say,” said Pete Boulay, a climatologist with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. “And looking at past history, might be a cooler-than-normal summer. But we’ll have to wait and see what happens. If you stay dry, it’s going to be hard to stay cool.”
And no doubt, Minnesota has been dry already with drought conditions persisting across northern and southwestern parts of the state.
“Most places in the state are about 1-3 inches short of normal for May, and right about this time of year, we should get about an inch of rain a week,” Boulay said. “Every time we don’t get that rain, every week that goes by, the drought will come back.”
The summer outlook says it is more likely that conditions remain drier than average through August. Though we’re past the majority of Minnesota’s wildfire season, Boulay said if conditions are right, that could create elevated fire threats, unless you’re lucky enough to see some rain.
“We’re in that kind of lazy pattern right now. There’s a high pressure off to our east, and we have kind of the return flow coming out of the south, so warm, and you know, you still might have one of those thunderstorms pop up very isolated, but maybe you’ll get lucky and get one, but most people won’t,” he said.
Boulay said he doesn’t see any change in sight in the short-term with more heat on the way to kick off June.
Summer warmth will hang on in the Twin Cities Wednesday, with some storms possible later in the day.
Highs will be in the upper 80s to near 90. Isolated thunderstorms are possible in the afternoon and evening, mainly across southern Minnesota.
Thursday will be dry, warm and less humid, though highs will stay well above normal.
Friday will bring pleasant late-May weather with sunshine and highs mainly in the 80s.
The weekend looks to be quiet and comfortable as dry conditions continue.
School was not in session over the holiday weekend, but a four-legged friend still managed to pay a visit to a Zimmerman, Minnesota, Montessori school.
The entire incident lasted less than 10 minutes, but left Prairie Hill Montessori with a shattered door and quite the story to tell.
“We got a call, we were up at our cabin… I was more concerned about the deer, which is just the way I am,” said Katherine Curtis, the school’s owner and instructor.
Curtis says the entire moment was caught on CCTV. It shows the deer break through a tempered glass door before tearing through the building, knocking items off shelves and attempting to exit through another door.
Eventually, a local sheriff’s deputy responded and was able to shoo the deer out the door.
“We were all like amazed at how fast it all happened. Actually, how fast the sheriff was able to get here,” Curtis said.
On Tuesday, Curtis was using the incident as a teaching moment. The school had painted a life-size deer on the boarded-up door, and students were coloring deer photos.
“All of the children came in this morning and reported to me what happened,” she said. “It’s unique. It’s something we can remember for years and we’ll have the video. The kids can remember it as something unique and special that happened to us at Prairie Hill.”
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