By BRIAN HALL
Associated Press
ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) -- Beau Bennett scored with 2:17 remaining to lift the New Jersey Devils over the Minnesota Wild in an unexpected 4-3 victory Tuesday night.
Pavel Zacha, Adam Henrique and Kyle Palmieri scored for New Jersey, which went 3-0-1 on its four-game road trip. Cory Schneider made 32 saves.
Jared Spurgeon, Jason Zucker and Erik Haula scored for Minnesota, which had won 17 of its previous 20 games. Devan Dubnyk stopped 22 shots for the Wild.
Bennett scored his third of the season and first in eight games after Blake Coleman sent a centering pass to him after falling down in the corner.
Minnesota was returning home after winning both games of a road trip and taking the lead in the Central Division. It pressured Schneider regularly, outshooting New Jersey 15-6 in the first period and 35-26 for the game.
Schneider did his part to slow the highest-scoring team in the Western Conference.
Spurgeon scored the only goal in the first period after he gloved a rebound off of Schneider, dropped the puck and batted it out of midair into the net on the back side.
Zucker's 12th goal of the season gave Minnesota a 2-0 advantage midway through the second. But the lowest-scoring team in the Eastern Conference came back.
Zacha, the sixth-overall pick in the 2015 draft, scored for the first time since Nov. 25 and had his first point in 17 games. Zacha's goal was his third of the season after a tough transition in his first full season in the NHL, which has included four games as a healthy scratch.
NOTES: Minnesota D Jonas Brodin left in the second period with an unspecified injury and did not return. ... New Jersey was still without D Andy Greene and F Vernon Fiddler. Fiddler missed his 11th game with a lower-body injury, while Greene missed his seventh game with an upper-body injury. ... Schneider had stopped 172 of 183 shots (.940 percent) over his previous seven starts. ... The Wild is 13-5-1 against the Eastern Conference after going 13-16-3 against the East last season.
UP NEXT
Devils: Return home to host the Montreal Canadiens on Friday.
Wild: Host the Arizona Coyotes on Thursday for the second game of a four-game homestand.
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