Granlund's goal in third period lifts Wild past Blues

ST. LOUIS -- Mikael Granlund scored the tiebreaking goal in the third period for the Minnesota Wild in a 3-2 win against the St. Louis Blues at Enterprise Center on Sunday.

Blues defenseman Colton Parayko whiffed on a clearing attempt, and Granlund got the loose puck and beat goalie Chad Johnson glove side from the slot at 7:43.
"I hardly ever touched the puck," said Granlund, who has 18 points (10 goals, eight assists) in the past 14 games. "There's some little things I've tried to do better. It seems like pucks are really going in right now."
WATCH: [All Wild vs. Blues highlights]
Wild coach Bruce Boudreau said, "He's our best offensive player. It's pretty cool. That's what he is, a really good hockey player."
Zach Parise and Joel Eriksson Ek scored, and Devan Dubnyk made 29 saves for Minnesota (11-4-2), which has won three straight and went 5-2-0 on a team-record seven-game road trip. The Wild have won 10 of their past 12 games.

"Today was a hard game. The end of trips are always tough," Parise said. "With the travel and the early start, it was a challenging game. But we scrambled and got ourselves a win."
Oskar Sundqvist and Alex Pietrangelo scored, and Johnson made 15 saves for St. Louis (6-6-3), which went 4-3-0 on a season-long seven-game homestand.
"It stings. I think we're all [ticked] off," Blues center Ryan O'Reilly said. "It's unacceptable. We've got to start making a push, we've got to start climbing, and especially against a team like that. We were there. We could have taken those two (points)."
Sundqvist gave the Blues a 1-0 lead at 19:01 of the first period on a one-timer in the slot.
Parise tied it 1-1 at 1:19 of the second period, getting a rebound at the left post and beating Johnson with a backhand. Eriksson Ek scored 25 seconds later on a rebound at the top of the crease to give the Wild a 2-1 lead.

Pietrangelo tied it 2-2 at 9:37 when he beat Dubnyk with a slap shot from the top of the right face-off circle. O'Reilly had an assist on the goal to extend his NHL career-high point streak to 10 games (eight goals, nine assists).
Dubnyk made a sprawling glove save on Alexander Steen with 26 seconds left in the third period to preserve the win.

They said it

"It says that they've got a lot of character. They wanted to win. You could tell there wasn't a lot of energy out there. We didn't have a lot of push in their zone. We were pretty opportunistic when we had to be." -- Wild coach Bruce Boudreau

"You've got to recognize you've got the puck in a dangerous area, just slap it out, just do whatever you can. Hammer it, and if somebody happens to be in your way, then it should hurt. You've got to get it out of there as hard as you can. … It's not just [Colton Parayko]. I think we probably had the puck on our stick about four times there. We've got to be better than that." -- Blues coach Mike Yeo on Mikael Granlund's goal
"I feel like we did a lot of good things. We had opportunities to win, we had opportunities to score at the end, we just didn't bury our chances. I felt we controlled a lot of the game. We still have to find a way to win. It would have been nice to finish this one on home ice." -- Blues defenseman Alex Pietrangelo

Need to know

Minnesota's five wins on its road trip were the most in team history, and its 24 points this season are the most in its history after 17 games. … Dubnyk is 7-2-0 with a .931 save percentage in his past nine starts. ... O'Reilly became the fifth player in Blues history to have a point streak of at least 10 games in his first season with St. Louis. ... Blues center Brayden Schenn missed his third straight game with an oblique strain.

What's next

Wild: Host the Washington Capitals on Tuesday (8 p.m. ET; FS-N, NBCSWA, NHL.TV)
Blues:At the Chicago Blackhawks on Wednesday (8 p.m. ET; NBCSN)