It’s Wild’s Night as Stars Fall

Even though a playoff bid is unlikely, the Minnesota Wild can still make life difficult for teams ahead of it in the standings.

Stacy Roest scored the tiebreaking goal with 8:57 left to lift Minnesota to a 5-3 victory over the Dallas Stars on Friday night at Dallas, defeating a playoff contender on the road for the second consecutive night.

“There’s a lot of character on this team,” Roest said. “We keep plugging along. We play every shift like it’s 0-0 and play within the system. It was a good effort to come back and win the way we did.”

With the score tied, 3-3, Roest scored on a rebound, and Pascal Dupuis had an empty-netter with 10.5 seconds remaining to end Dallas’ four-game winning streak.

The Wild, which defeated St. Louis, 3-0, on Thursday night, was 2-11-2 in its previous 15 games.

“You can’t overlook them,” Stars’ center Mike Modano said. “But maybe we talked them up too much. There’s a reason they are where they are in the conference. We talked ourselves into playing their type of game.”

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Buffalo 3, Montreal 0--Martin Biron stopped 26 shots to record his second consecutive shutout and lead the Sabres to a victory at Buffalo, N.Y.

Chris Gratton, J.P. Dumont and Brian Campbell scored for the Sabres in a critical Eastern Conference meeting. With the win, the Sabres jumped ahead of idle Pittsburgh into 11th place, and within four points of Montreal and the New York Rangers, who are tied for eighth.

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Columbus 4, New York Islanders 2--Geoff Sanderson scored twice and had a third goal disallowed as the Blue Jackets won at Columbus, Ohio.

Hundreds of hats were thrown on the ice when Sanderson apparently scored midway through the final period, but the goal was waved off by referee Tim Peel after a video review apparently showed Sanderson had kicked in the puck.

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Philadelphia 4, Tampa Bay 2--Chris Therien scored a tiebreaking goal with 9:17 left in the third period as the Flyers won at Tampa, Fla.

Paul Ranheim had an empty-net power-play goal with 32.2 seconds left. Justin Williams and Eric Weinrich had the other Philadelphia goals.

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Washington 2, Carolina 2--Ron Francis scored two power-play goals, rallying the Hurricanes at Raleigh, N.C.

Jaromir Jagr and Peter Bondra scored within a 12-second span in the second period to give Washington a 2-1 lead.

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Florida 5, Edmonton 4--Niklas Hagman and Ivan Novoseltsev each had a goal and two assists as the Panthers held off the Oilers at Sunrise, Fla., to end a seven-game losing streak.

Hagman, Jason Wiemer, Valeri Bure and Byron Ritchie scored first-period goals for Florida.

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Boston 3, Atlanta 0--Byron Dafoe stopped 21 shots as the Bruins ended a five-game winless streak and took over the Northeast Division lead with a victory at Atlanta.

Dafoe’s fourth shutout of the season and 26th of his career moved Boston two points ahead of Toronto, which has played two fewer games.

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Philadelphia Flyer forward Mark Recchi was suspended two games by the league for elbowing Calgary defenseman Denis Gauthier in the head.... Colorado Avalanche right wing Dan Hinote will miss three to four weeks with an injured left shoulder.