Jared Spurgeon, Joel Eriksson Ek and Frederick Gaudreau scored to help the Minnesota Wild top the Chicago Blackhawks 4-2 on Sunday night. Matt Boldy had three assists for Minnesota in the opener of a five-game trip.

Goalie Filip Gustavsson’s 18 saves and Marcus Foligno’s empty-netter preserved earlier goals from captain Jared Spurgeon, Frederick Gaudreau and Joel Eriksson Ek as the Wild moved to 18-5-3 on the road.

With their need for a strong start to snap their skid, the Wild received it when Spurgeon opened the scoring at 5:43. The defenseman joined an odd-man rush, received the puck at the blue line and lifted a top-corner shot from the slot.

The Wild had their best player back for the first time in a month, but they didn’t play like it. Kirill Kaprizov’s return was spoiled by a 4-0 shellacking from Utah Hockey Club on Thursday night at Xcel Energy Center that continued the Wild’s woes at home.

David’s come in and I think he’s really shown some of his very good attributes,” John Hynes said, with a nod to Jiricek’s imposing 6-foot-3 frame. “You can’t teach size.”

"We're choosing to lose," coach John Hynes said after the Wild's woes at home continued with a 5-4 loss to the Flames.

The Minnesota Wild and Calgary Flames met for the second time this season on Saturday evening, Jan. 25, and both teams were on the first game of back-to-backs.

Welcome to Instant Reaction, where we give you our instant reaction to tonight’s Calgary Flames game and ask our readers to do the same in the comments section below!

Andrei Kuzmenko had two goals and an assist, and the Calgary Flames used their power play to beat the Minnesota Wild 5-4 on Saturday night.

Andrei Kuzmenko had two goals and an assist, and the Calgary Flames used their power play to beat the Minnesota Wild 5-4.

Clark Bishop made it a three-goal game 11 minutes, 53 seconds into the third period. Then the Wild (28-17-4) tried to make a push. Freddy Gaudreau scored a power-play goal 2 minutes, 22 seconds later to cut it back to two. While Kuzmenko scored his second of the night just 14 seconds later for the apparent dagger, it wasn't quite over.

While still holding the best road record in the NHL, Minnesota fell to below .500 at home (11-12-1) with the loss.