Wild completes season sweep of Chicago Blackhawks

A wild penalty, a wild fight and a wild Chicago Blackhawks lineup all added up to one thing Tuesday night in Minnesota — a 4-1 Wild victory.

Jared Spuregon, Erik Haula and Nino Niederreiter scored third-period goals to break a 1-1 tie, giving Minnesota its sixth straight victory overall and its seventh straight over the Blackhawks.

With five games remaining, the Hawks are 6 points behind Dallas and St. Louis in the Central Division, and 4 points ahead of fourth-place Nashville.

This game was crazy before the puck even dropped as Artem Anisimov (lower-body injury) and Brent Seabrook (illness) both sat out for coach Joel Quenneville's team.

Then, 9:27 into the first period, Duncan Keith was assessed a match penalty and ejected. Keith, after being put on his backside by Charlie Coyle, purposely swung at Coyle's head with his stick and drew blood.

That gave Minnesota a five-minute power play, which the Hawks killed off and actually scored on when Jonathan Toews fed Marian Hossa for the 499th goal of Hossa's career. Hossa neatly flipped a shot over Devan Dubnyk's left shoulder 11:55 into the first period to make it 1-1.

Keith's action will be looked at by the NHL Department of Player Safety and would be awfully costly for the Hawks if the defenseman is handed a lengthy suspension.

Keith did not talk after the game.

“We've missed guys all year long, so I'm not worrying about hypotheticals,” coach Joel Quenneville told reporters.

There was no scoring in the second period, but the middle stanza was highlighted by Andrew Shaw and Matt Dumba dropping the gloves and engaging in an old-school hockey fight in which both players landed several solid shots.

Dumba drew the Hawks' ire when he drilled Patrick Kane with an open-ice hit at the United Center on March 20.

Kane went up to Shaw in the penalty box after the fight and the two bumped fists.

“You can't hit a guy like Kaner, especially high like that,” Shaw told Comcast SportsNet. “So I wanted to let him know that I'm going to be a presence tonight, and we had a nice little bout there.”

Shaw's teammates were cheering him on and congratulated him afterward.

“Just shows the love we have in the room for one another,” Shaw said. “We're a team, we're a family, and we're going to stick up for one another.”

Scott Darling started in net for the seventh straight time as Corey Crawford continues to try to work his way back from an upper-body injury. Darling made 14 saves, including 2 of highlight-reel variety in the second period that kept the game knotted at 1-1.

But Darling couldn't stop Spurgeon with 15:53 to go when the Wild defenseman took a pass from Mikko Koivu and scored on a forehand-backhand move that Darling had little chance of stopping.

Erik Haula made it 3-1 seven minutes later with a nifty move in close, and Niederreiter's goal came into an empty net.

“I thought we did a lot of good things,” Quenneville said. “A couple rush chances both end up in our net and that was the game.”

The Wild won all five games against the Hawks this season. According to Comcast SportsNet, the last time a Hawks opponent swept a season series of five or more games came in 1938-39 when the Bruins won all eight meetings.