ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — Ryan Hartman broke a 2-all tie midway through the third period, and the Minnesota Wild beat the Tampa Bay Lightning 4-2 on Sunday.
Hartman scored for the third straight game and has goals in five of the last six games to give him 12 on the season. Nick Bjugstad, Victor Rask and Marcus Foligno also scored for Minnesota, which has won three in a row and scored the most goals in the NHL since Nov. 2.
Corey Perry scored for the second time in three games for Tampa Bay. Alex Killorn added his first goal in 11 games, tying the game in the second period.
Kirill Kaprizov went to the net after collecting the puck near the side boards and passed across for Hartman, who spun and delivered a quick shot past Tampa Bay goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy 9:15 into the third.
Vasilevskiy stopped 33 shots for the Lightning, which had won three games in a row and six of seven.
Minnesota's Cam Talbot made 28 saves.
The Lightning beat Minnesota 5-4 in a shootout in Tampa Bay on Nov. 21 to snap a four-game losing streak to the Wild. Minnesota has points in 12 of its past 15 games against the Lightning and is 6-0-1 in the past seven.
Bjugstad opened the scoring midway through the first after picking up a loose puck in the neutral zone. He skated down the side and outraced Mathieu Joseph, turning the corner before sneaking the puck past Vasilevskiy’s left shoulder in a small window in the corner of the goal.
Perry answered 48 seconds later with a quick wrist shot from the faceoff circle past Talbot. But Rask, who had been a healthy scratch the previous two games, scored his third goal of the season before the end of the first after a pass from behind the net that missed its initial target.
Killorn, who had scored seven goals in his first nine games, scored for the first time since Nov. 1 with a wrist shot through traffic for the only goal of the second.
LESS THAN FULL STRENGTH
Wild F Mats Zuccarello was scratched with an upper-body injury. He also missed the third period of Friday’s win against Winnipeg. Captain Jared Spurgeon missed his fourth game with a lower-body injury and is considered week-to-week.
Joseph went to the locker room after a second-period collision with Hartman and didn’t return for Tampa Bay. The Lightning were still without D Erik Cernak due to his upper-body injury. He missed his eighth game with Cal Foote in the lineup on Sunday.
Brayden Point and Nikita Kucherov are out with longer-term injuries. Point was scratched for his fourth straight game and he’s out four to six weeks.
UP NEXT
Lightning: Finish a two-game trip at St. Louis on Tuesday.
Wild: Host Arizona on Tuesday as part of a five-game homestand.
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