Famous hockey quote “You can’t think of this in Hollywood “we could” was uttered back in 2008 in the address of Ilya Kovalchuk and his golden goal at the World Cup, but over the years it has firmly settled in the mouths of Russian fans and is still used to this day in many amazing and incredible episodes. The match between the Minnesota Wild and the Vancouver Canucks today as part of the regular season of the National Hockey League was another reason to remember the catchphrase of Roman Skvortsov. But now his quote can be slightly paraphrased: “In Hollywood they couldn’t come up with such a miracle, but in St. Paul they came up with a not so miracle.”
The local “Minnesota” has the nickname “Wild” for a reason. Or in common parlance — “savages”. Some truly crazy and incredible phenomena and events are constantly associated with this club. But what happened in the match with the Canucks exceeded the wildest expectations. Although it’s unlikely that anyone predicted them. “Vancouver” is quite confidently among the leaders of the NHL season, “Minnesota” does not lose hope of breaking into the playoff zone and is taking its points in the last games. Both teams demonstrate effective hockey, but so…
17 — this is how many goals the teams scored between them in the final head-to-head meeting of the regular season. To give you an idea: in the previous two matches, the Wild and Canucks scored a total of only four goals. “Something wild”—the NHL press service headlined the last match with these two words.
After the first two periods of today's madness in St. Paul, the winner of the match seemed clear: Vancouver led 5:3 (4:1 at the moment) and had a significant advantage in shots on target. However, in the third 20 minutes the course of the meeting turned upside down so that everyone went crazy: coaches, players, fans, commentators and journalists. In just five minutes from the throw-in after the second break, Minnesota scored five goals in a row, then missed twice, but subsequently scored two more times. The Wild not only set a new franchise record for goals against an opponent in a single game, but they instantly extended it. 10 goals — the “savages” have never scored so many goals.
In addition, three hockey players scored a hat-trick at once! First, one of Vancouver's main snipers JT Miller scored a three-pointer.
Then the caps flew onto the ice of the Excel Energy Center arena in honor of Yoel Eriksson Ek .
Well, at the very end of the meeting, Kirill Kaprizov received the same praise. For the Russian super-scorer, this hat-trick became the second of the season (the first happened less than a month ago in the match with Carolina) and the fourth in his career in the NHL championships (fifth including the playoffs).
Along with the classic hat-trick, Kaprizov also scored an assist hat-trick. 3 goals, 3 assists, 6 points scored — there have never been so many in the Russian’s career. Neither in the KHL, nor in the NHL. Today, Kirill rewrote both his personal history and that of all Russian hockey. Previously, before the Minnesota star, only Sergei Makarov managed to score at least six points in one match of the NHL championship (in the February 1990 match against Edmonton, the Calgary newcomer scored as many as 7 points, which remains an absolute record among Russians) and Nikita Kucherov (in In the current regular season, the leader of Tampa executed Carolina, scoring two goals and making four assists). All. No other Russian has ever achieved such an achievement. Although there were a huge number of cases when they scored 5 points.
Together with Kaprizov, Eriksson Ek also scored 6 points in the match with Vancouver (the same 3+3). Both tied the franchise record for most assists, previously held by Marian Gaborik. Kirill scored four of the six points in the third 20 minutes and became the second player in Wild history after Kevin Fiala to be so productive in one period. Also, the Russian striker repeated his own club record for goals in one period — on March 13, 2021, in a match with Arizona, the Russian also scored a hat-trick in one 20-minute period.
Kaprizov’s game pleases with every match. When he was injured on New Year's Eve, there was a fear that the Russian forward would only regain his form closer to the playoffs, which could take place without Minnesota. However, these fears turned out to be in vain: after returning, Kirill played 14 matches and scored 23 points (10+13) during this period. Fantastic! Everyone is used to seeing similar numbers from Connor McDavid, but the native of Novokuznetsk is also capable of doing crazy things.
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