VANCOUVER, B.C. – At no time during the marathon seven-month NHL regular season are there style points available. Standings points are the only things that matter between October and April, but especially in the season’s last six weeks or so, when the mad scramble to lock up playoff positions is on.

So when Minnesota Wild goalie Filip Gustavsson calls a road win “ugly” after calling a home win “dirty” he means so affectionately, in both cases. As long as the Wild are winning and grabbing two standings points, they are generally unconcerned with how they arrive with a scoreboard advantage at the final horn.

“You’ve got to win hockey games in different ways, and we found a way to do it today,” said Wild forward Marcus Johansson, after that “ugly” win in Seattle, where Minnesota built a 4-1 lead, then mustered just one shot on goal over the final 27 minutes, hanging on for a 4-3 victory.

“We could have played better in the second half, but we did what we had to do,” Johansson said. “And coming down, we got to build our game, and we learn from this, and then we improve on it.”

With the Friday afternoon trade deadline fast approaching, and the Wild looking like a team that does not have the salary cap space or other fiscal bandwidth to swing a major move, there was a growing sense in the visitors’ locker room in Seattle that they will go to war with the army they have, expecting that some combination of Kirill Kaprizov, Joel Eriksson Ek and Jonas Brodin will return before the regular season ends, right about tax time. If that means patching together wins that are dirty or ugly or whatever else you want to call them, the Wild are fine with that, as long as they are wins.

“I think it’s about getting to the playoffs. It doesn’t matter how we do it. We just have to figure out something that works for us,” said Gustavsson, referencing a vital second period penalty kill that delayed the Kraken grabbing the game’s momentum for a few crucial minutes. “PK has been like terrible stat-wise all year. It doesn’t matter if it’s 32nd in the league when the series stops. We just need to figure out how to be good in the playoffs for the PK to work because otherwise you don’t win in the playoffs.”

Related Articles

‘They need a little boost right now,’ Wild GM Bill Guerin says of his team

Wild acquire veteran forward Gustav Nyquist from Nashville

Speros: Spice on ice for US vs. Canada

Wild move clears way for returns of Kirill Kaprizov and Jared Spurgeon

Wild praised for stepping up as Kirill Kaprizov inches closer to returning

And while some coaches stress the value of learning from losses, the Wild’s coach would rather his team learn from wins, especially now.

“To me that’s a great lesson for us moving forward and it’s better to win and learn some lessons than lose and learn some lessons,” John Hynes said, before his team headed to Vancouver for one more on the road, before a stretch where they will play 10 of 11 at home. “Good on our guys to find a way to win the game and we’ll take two points and we’ll also take some good lessons out of it.”