Majority kings: Kaprizov scored a double, and Svechnikov scored his 11th goal of the NHL season

Benefit Kaprizova

For the Russian striker of Minnesota, the current regular season is turning out to be the most controversial in his North American career.

Kirill Kaprizov got off to a great start and scored six points in four matches, but was unable to maintain the high pace.

Of course, averaging one point per game is pretty good, but not for a star of the caliber of the Russian, whose fans are accustomed to expecting miracles from him.

And in the absence of the leader’s inspired play, the Wild also stalled.

One of the distinctive features of this season for Kaprizov was his long goalless streaks.

In previous years, he could also be “silent” for a long time, but then he gave out a couple of striking segments and noticeably corrected the statistics.

This time this happened extremely rarely, and the dry intervals were longer than ever.

So, in October he could not score for five meetings in a row, in December - six, and before the trip to Florida he did not score in four games.

But before the teams had even spent three minutes on the ice, Kaprizov turned on the red light behind the hosts’ goal.

During the extra play, he opened up on the back foot and put his stick under Matt Boldy's cross.

But if the goal itself turned out to be quite ordinary, then it was preceded by rather interesting events.

William Lockwood showed unreasonable rudeness, which provoked not only his removal, but also a massive brawl on the ice.

The Panthers forward made a forceful move against Wild goalkeeper Marc-Andre Fleury, who left the target, for which he was punished with a minor fine, as well as a series of heavy blows from the opponent’s field hockey players.

Subsequently, Florida suffered more than once due to the incontinence of its players.

Already at the beginning of the second period, the hosts restored parity through the efforts of Aaron Ekblad, but by the middle of the period they were down 1:4.

And in all three cases, Minnesota excelled in unequal lineups.

Ryan Hartman, Brock Faber and Mats Zuccarello, assisted by Kaprizov, each scored a goal.

It was he who prevented the guests from committing a loss in the opponent's zone, after which he blocked Sergei Bobrovsky's view at the moment of the Norwegian's throw.

And thus he sat his compatriot on the bench, who by this time had only 11 saves (73.3%) to his credit.

After the appearance of Anthony Stolarz, the Panthers perked up a little and even reserved the second half of the confrontation.

But this was not enough to win.

The highlight of the match was put by Hartman, who hit the empty target, but the decisive hit fell to Kaprizov, who scored two power-play goals for the first time in the NHL.

Kirill, in the style of Alexander Ovechkin, opened up in the throw-in circle and left the disoriented goalkeeper out of action with a sweeping flick.

Thus, Minnesota prevailed over Florida (6:4), and Kaprizov not only earned the title of the first star of the meeting and the third star of the entire game day, but also strengthened his status as the Wild’s top scorer in the championship (15 + 24 ).

He also moved into fourth place in franchise history in games scored with two or more points (73), leaving behind Ryan Suter.

Only Zach Parise (79), Marian Gaborik (114) and Mikko Koivu (153) have more.

Svechnikov's winning goal

In turn, one of the main creators of Carolina’s success was Russian striker Andrei Svechnikov, who has recently gained phenomenal momentum.

In the previous ten matches, he scored 16 (8 + 8) points and was one of the team’s three most productive hockey players, although he missed the start of the season due to injury.

And in the confrontation with Detroit, he again demonstrated his skills as both a sniper and an assistant.

True, Svechnikov came to the forefront in the last ten minutes of the meeting, and before that other Russians lit up the ice of the PNC Arena.

So, already at the 147th second, Red Wings forward Klim Kostin opened the scoring, for whom this was the third goal of the season.

And it doesn’t matter that Antti Raanta played a significant role in this, as he failed to cope with a not very powerful throw.

However, just 47 seconds later, the Hurricanes leveled the situation, and towards the end of the second period they took the lead.

Martin Necas, assisted by Dmitry Orlov, scored.

The Russian defender dispersed the hosts' attack and added to the scorer's tally (2 + 14).

“Detroit” did not give up and again managed to win back, but at a key moment Svechnikov had his say.

At first, he turned out to be the quickest on the spot and took part in realizing the numerical advantage, and then helped Sebastian Aho hit the empty target (4:2).

Finn became only the third hockey player in club history to reach the 50-point mark in seven seasons.

Only Eric Staal (10) and Ron Francis (15) succeeded more often.

However, Aho still did not make it into the top three stars of the match.

The first was named Necas, who also took part in Aho’s historic goal, and the second was Svechnikov, who would soon be able to break into second position in the list of the team’s top scorers.

Already, his record includes 30 (11 + 19) scoring points, while Seth Jarvis has only three more (15 + 18).

The Czech and Russian were accompanied by Michael Bunting, who scored an assist double.

As for other Russians, Columbus forward Egor Chinakhov and Islanders defenseman Alexander Romanov also scored assists on this game day.

True, they were unable to save their teams from defeat.

The former was defeated on home ice by New Jersey (1:4), and the latter unexpectedly lost to Chicago (3:4) in overtime.