Minnesota Wild vs Los Angeles Kings Match Player Stats On Apr 23, 2021

Kirill Kaprizov continued his stellar rookie season, scoring two goals to lead the visiting Minnesota Wild in a 4-2 win against the Los Angeles Kings on Friday night.

Kaprizov leads all NHL rookies with 21 goals and 40 points. He has six goals and three assists in eight games against the Kings this season.

Nico Sturm and Joel Eriksson Ek also scored, and Cam Talbot made 40 saves for the Wild (30-13-3, 63 points), who won their sixth straight game to match their season-best win streak.

Talbot is 6-0-1 in his past seven starts and 4-0-0 against the Kings this season.

Trevor Moore and Anze Kopitar scored, and Calvin Petersen made 20 saves for the Kings (17-21-6, 40 points), who remain five points behind the final playoff spot in the West Division with 12 games left.

Kaprizov, who broke the single-season franchise record for goals and points by a rookie earlier this week, gave Minnesota a 1-0 lead at 7:44 of the first period.

Kaprizov brought the puck into the Los Angeles zone on the right side, slowed up above the circle and then broke toward the net again. He pulled the puck through his legs to get around Kings defenseman Mikey Anderson and then scored from in close.

The Kings tied the score 1-1 with one second left in the first period.

Gabriel Vilardi got the puck behind the Minnesota net and passed out front to Moore, who scored on a one-timer.

The Wild scored on their first power play when Kaprizov netted a wrist shot from the inside edge of the right circle to move Minnesota back ahead 2-1 at 6:41 of the second period.

It was the seventh power-play goal of the season for Kaprizov, setting a Wild rookie record.

Minnesota went 1-for-2 on the power play to improve to 16-for-37 in the month of April, the best rate (43.2 percentage) in the NHL in that span.

The Wild extended the lead to 3-1 when Sturm put in a rebound at 11:19 of the third period.

Kopitar scored on a wraparound that bounced off Talbot to make it 3-2 at 15:17 of the third period and give Kopitar 995 points for his NHL career.

The Wild killed a late penalty before Eriksson Ek scored an empty-net goal with 10 seconds left to make it 4-2.

--Field Level Media