Boldy has 3 points, Wild hold off Blackhawks

CHICAGO -- Matt Boldy had three assists, and the Minnesota Wild held on for a 4-2 victory against the Chicago Blackhawks at United Center on Sunday.

Boldy has 14 points (five goals, nine assists) in his past 11 games.

“I thought we played good; I thought it was more to our identity of how we want to play -- be stingy, be hard again in the zone,” Boldy said.

Marcus Foligno had a goal and an assist, and Filip Gustavsson made 18 saves for the Wild (29-17-4), who had lost two in a row and five of six, including 5-4 to the Calgary Flames on Saturday.

“I thought we had much more focus to start the game,” Minnesota coach John Hynes said. “I think the contribution throughout the lineup was good. Going into the game, we said there’s two teams that are going to try to win. There’s going to be surges and pushes in the game, and obviously that came in the third period, but they key is to find ways to win is what we talked about.

"I think a step in the right direction in a multitude of areas, and now we've got to keep building on it.”

Petr Mrazek made 24 saves for the Blackhawks (15-29-5), who have lost seven of eight.

Seth Jones and Frank Nazar scored for Chicago, which entered the third period trailing 3-0.

“It’s just another game where we didn’t come out good enough,” Blackhawks forward Tyler Bertuzzi said. “We made a late push, but it’s hard in this league to come back from three goals, especially in the third period. Obviously, we made the push, but it wasn’t good enough.”

Jared Spurgeon put the Wild up 1-0 at 5:43 of the first period, taking a pass in the slot from Boldy and putting the puck past the stick side of Mrazek.

Frederick Gaudreau made it 2-0 at 7:17, when his shot from the bottom of the right face-off circle got past Mrazek on the short side.

The Wild outshot the Blackhawks 11-1 in the first period.

“Just good neutral zone, staying above guys and a good backcheck,” Boldy said. “When we can backcheck, our [defensemen] can stay up and hold gaps and stuff like that. It makes their lives easier.”

With Minesota on a four-minute power play, Joel Eriksson Ek scored on a tip-in of Kirill Kaprizov’s feed to the front of the net to make it 3-0 at 10:45 of the second period.

Jones’ power-play goal pulled the Blackhawks to within 3-1 just 56 seconds into the third period. Jones scored on a wrist shot from the slot after taking a pass from Connor Bedard.

Nazar made it 3-2 at 4:16, scoring from low in the right face-off circle after taking a cross-ice pass from Ethan Del Mastro, who earned his first NHL point in his fourth game.

“Yeah, I mean personal accolades kind of don't mean as much when you're losing, but obviously nice to get a point,” Del Mastro said. “But I think it's more so about the team.”

Foligno scored an empty-net goal for the Wild at 18:18 for the 4-2 final.

“It was a big one, Foligno said. “Boldy made a good play on the wall to kind of slow the puck down. If it gets a little bit faster, I’m able to corral that. That’s big. It just settles the bench down, and just having guys out there knowing how to shut it down.”

NOTES: Spurgeon scored his first goal since Dec. 23, also against the Blackhawks. The Wild captain missed nine games with a lower-body injury before returning Thursday in a 4-0 loss to the Utah Hockey Club. … Spurgeon is one point from 400 in the NHL (115 goals, 284 assists in 902 games). … The Blackhawks recalled forward Landon Slaggert from Rockford of the American Hockey League. Slaggert played 16 games for Chicago last season and had one goal and three assists. He did not play Sunday.