Wild 3, Blues 1
Antti Miettinen and Kyle Brodziak scored just over four minutes apart in the second period as the Minnesota Wild capped a home-and-home sweep of the visiting St. Louis Blues with a 3-1 triumph on Saturday.
Cal Clutterbuck netted his team-leading 17th goal of the season and Niklas Backstrom turned aside 24 shots for Minnesota (30-20-5), which skated to a 5-4 shootout victory on Friday at the Scottrade Center.
The Wild have now won nine of their last 11 games to remain in hot pursuit of a postseason berth in the Western Conference.
Backstrom, who will turn 33 on Sunday, improved to 4-1-0 in his last five starts and upped his season mark to 18-12-3.
After Clutterbuck opened the scoring with 69 seconds remaining in the first period, Miettinen doubled the advantage with a power-play goal at 4:07 of the second period.
Brodziak matched Miettinen with his respective 11th goal of the season just 4:15 later to give Minnesota a comfortable 3-0 advantage. That goal chased starting St. Louis netminder Jaroslav Halak from the net in favor of Ty Conklin.
Patrik Berglund netted a power-play goal with 5:12 remaining in the second period for St. Louis (24-21-9), which has dropped 13 of its last 17 contests.
Halak recorded 17 saves before giving way to Ty Conklin, who stopped all 11 shots he faced.