Wild silence Avs again to take home-and-home set

Published February 05, 2015

Denver, CO (SportsNetwork.com) - Two games, two shutout wins for the Minnesota Wild over the Colorado Avalanche.

Darcy Kuemper turned aside 30 shots and the visiting Wild scored once in each period of Saturday's 3-0 win, sweeping the season-opening home-and-home set with their Central Division rivals.

"We knew they would come out with a better effort tonight," said Kuemper, who faced only 16 shots during Thursday's 5-0 drubbing.

Colorado played with much more energy Saturday night in front of the Pepsi Center crowd, but still couldn't solve the Minnesota netminder.

"We certainly had the spark tonight. We played hard," said Colorado captain Gabriel Landeskog. "We were just a couple goalposts away from tying it."

Semyon Varlamov was sharp in goal for the Avalanche, making 31 saves.

The Wild grabbed the lead 1:51 into the contest on a deflection by Charlie Coyle.

Jason Zucker beat Varlamov from between the circles off a feed from Thomas Vanek at 11:50 of the second period.

The Avalanche failed to score while skating 6-on-4 for a full two minutes late in the third period.

Zach Parise added an empty-net goal with four seconds remaining.

Game Notes

Colorado was down a defenseman for a significant portion of the game after Erik Johnson was given a five-minute major and a game misconduct for elbowing Erik Haula in the head at 2:23 of the second period ... The Avalanche didn't lose their second game last season until Nov. 6. They started 12-1-0 in 2013-14 ... Varlamov made his 200th career NHL start.

URL

https://www.foxnews.com/sports/wild-silence-avs-again-to-take-home-and-home-set