Thanks to the comfort of a charter flight home from western New York, members of the Minnesota Wild will wake up at home on Thanksgiving morning. And thanks to their continued stellar play away from home, they spent the night before Thanksgiving in the place where they do their best work. Namely, some other team’s home rink.

This time, it was the Buffalo Sabres getting a taste of Minnesota’s road magic, as an early goal by Kirill Kaprizov and a solid night from goalie Filip Gustavsson made for a 1-0 Wild win on Wednesday at KeyBank Arena.

Minnesota improved to 10-1-3 away from home with the victory, which is tops in the NHL.

“We got excellent goaltending. They had some strong pushes at times. I thought later in the game he had to make some big saves,” coach John Hynes said to the reporters in Buffalo. “I like the fact that it was a tight game, and I thought that we continued to push for offense even in the third period. We didn’t just check the whole game.”

In contrast to Monday’s home loss to Winnipeg, in which Minnesota had fired a whopping 22 shots in the first period, they were outshot 16-4 in the opening 20 minutes in Buffalo, and they still emerged with a lead.

Because Kaprizov missed the Wild’s game at Calgary last Saturday with an injury, the NHL insists that his road game scoring streak ended at 11 games. But he picked up where he left off in Buffalo, giving the visitors the lead on his team-leading 14th goal of the season. It was a classic tic-tac-toe play with Brock Faber starting the rush, and Joel Eriksson Ek ending it with a cross-ice pass to Kaprizov, who slammed the puck home. Matt Boldy assisted on the goal as well, giving him 10 points in his past 10 games.

“Kirill has been such a clutch player for us all year long, and that was a big one for the winner tonight. One was enough,” Hynes said.

The Wild killed a pair of penalties in the first period, which partially accounted for Buffalo’s lopsided shot advantage, as they tested Gustavsson seven times with the man advantage.

The Minnesota goalie finished with 39 saves for his second shutout of the season and was helped notably by his teammates who blocked a season-high 32 shots.

“They’re a very good offensive team, and we knew they were going to get a few chances,” Gustavsson said to reporters in Buffalo. “I thought we blocked a fair amount of shots out there and limited their chances somewhat. I think a really good effort from our side.”

For Buffalo, goalie Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen had 28 saves

The Wild got bad news before the first puck dropped, as their long and distinguished injury report got a news addition. They knew Mats Zuccarello would be out, as the top line forward is still likely weeks away from returning from a serious lower body injury. They had a good idea that forwards Jakub Lauko and Marat Khusnutdinov would be missing (and they were), as both are day-to-day with lower body ailments.

The unexpected absence was veteran defenseman Jonas Brodin, who was scratched due to an upper body injury. It was the third game in the past seven that Brodin has missed, which meant Jon Merrill was in the lineup for the 15th time this season.

It was the opposite story for the Sabres, who got top line forward Tage Thompson back after he had missed Buffalo’s previous five games with a lower body injury. He had the tying goal on his stick in the final minute, with the Buffalo goalie on the bench, but Gustavsson thwarted Thompson’s wrist shot.

“It was a gritty win. We were pretty tight the entire game and had a decent amount of chances to score a couple more goals, but I think we locked it down pretty well,” said defenseman Declan Chisholm, whose four blocked shots were second to the seven recorded by Jake Middleton.

After sitting out Monday’s home game, former Gophers forward Travis Boyd played his second game for the Wild, slotted at right wing on the fourth line.

The Wild return home for their next three, hosting Chicago on Friday afternoon, Nashville on Saturday evening and Vancouver on Tuesday evening.

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