(Sports Network) – John Madden scored the tie-breaking goal and Martin Havlat added three assists as Minnesota downed Tampa Bay, 4-1, at St. Pete Times Forum.
Cal Clutterbuck, Antti Miettinen and Eric Nystrom also tallied for the Wild, who ended a two-game slide in which they were outscored 7-2.
Niklas Backstrom turned away 37 shots to earn the win for the visitors, who evened their road record at 3-3-1.
Martin St. Louis recorded the only goal for the Lightning, who have lost three straight and six out of seven. Dan Ellis stopped 14 shots in defeat.
Tampa Bay announced Sunday that captain Vincent Lecavalier will undergo surgery on Monday to expedite the healing process of a non-displaced fracture in his right hand. Lecavalier, who suffered the injury during Thursday’s loss at Washington, is expected to be sidelined 3-to-4 weeks.
Clutterbuck started the scoring with a fluky power play goal 7:16 into the game. He came down the left side and his shot from the top of the circle was partially deflected by defenseman Mike Lundin. The puck caromed off the end boards toward the crease where it banked off the back of Ellis’s left leg and into the net.
St. Louis uncorked a slapshot that beat Backstrom to tie the game 11 1/2 minutes into the first period with the hosts on the power play. However, Minnesota needed just 84 seconds to regain the lead for good.
Havlat made a backhand pass from behind the net to Madden, who one-timed it past an unaware Ellis to put the Wild back on top, at 2-1, with just over seven minutes left in the stanza.
While on the power play, Andrew Brunette passed from behind the net to Miettinen, who one-timed a shot from between the circles to make it 3-1 with 30 ticks to go in the period.
Backstrom turned away nine shots in the middle session while Ellis stopped all seven he faced.
Nystrom added an empty net goal with 49 seconds to play to sew up the victory as Backstrom denied all 13 shots he encountered in the final 20 minutes.
Game Notes
The Wild went 2-for-3 on the power play to push their league-leading percentage to 29.4 (20-for-68)…Minnesota improved 7-4-1 when tallying at least once with the man-advantage…Backstrom improved to 4-0-1 in five starts versus Tampa Bay, which had entered the game going 210 minutes without yielding a power-play goal at home…Steven Stamkos picked up an assist on the lone Lightning goal to extend his points streak to five straight games, though his goal-scoring string ended at four. Stamkos also has notched at least a point in 12 of his last 13 contests.