Without Kirill Kaprizov, Jonas Brodin and Jared Spurgeon, Minnesota played a smart, poised and gutsy game, pulling away in the third for a 3-1 victory at Ball Arena.

The Wild are bringing Kirill Kaprizov and Jared Spurgeon back from injuries as the NHL season reaches the home stretch.

The Minnesota Wild feel a sense of urgency despite having nearly half a season left to play. After losing three in a row and four of their last five games, the Wild will look to turn things around on Monday afternoon against the host Colorado Avalanche in Denver.

Here are three takeaways from the Wild's 3-1 road win over Colorado. The Minnesota Wild (28-15-4) walked away with an impressive road win over the Colorado Avalanche (28-19-1) on Monday. If they would have lost, Minnesota would've dropped to a Wild Card spot.

Jared Spurgeon, Joel Eriksson Ek and Frederick Gaudreau scored to help the Minnesota Wild top the Chicago Blackhawks 4-2.

Some of the issues that looked fixed two days ago in a decisive win against the Dallas Stars were again troubling for the Colorado Avalanche in a loss to the Minnesota Wild.

Yakov Trenin and Brock Faber scored goals 1:35 apart early in the third period, and the Minnesota Wild beat the Colorado Avalanche 3-1 in Denver on Monday.

Wild: Without some key players, including captain Jared Spurgeon and leading scorer ... They improved to an NHL-best 17-5-3 on the road. Avalanche: Colorado continued to struggle on the power ...

MacKinnon is the most likely Avalanche player to take advantage of a Wild defense that is bleeding shots. Not only is he the best shot-generator on the team, but the Wild have allowed the second-most shots to centers in the NHL over the past few weeks.

After allowing just five shots in the first two periods, the Wild had to scramble to keep the lead against Chicago in a narrow 4-2 win.

NEW YORK — Artturi Lehkonen scored the tiebreaking goal with 14.7 seconds left and Mackenzie Blackwood made 33 saves and the Colorado Avalanche defeated the New York Rangers 5-4 on Sunday.

Cale Makar scored twice and set up the tiebreaking goal by Artturi Lehkonen with 15 seconds remaining as the revamped Colorado Avalanche blew a pair of two-goal leads before earning a dramatic 5-4 victory over the host New York Rangers on Sunday afternoon.