- Wild beat the Sharks 4-1 for the 1,000th regular-season win in franchise history
- Minnesota got there in 1,995 games, 23 fewer than the Flyers needed
- Read below for the Predators comparison and what the Wild look like now
The Minnesota Wild just set a record no other franchise has.
The Wild beat the San Jose Sharks 4-1 on Friday at Grand Casino Arena for the 1,000th regular-season win in team history. They reached it in 1,995 games, the fastest any NHL franchise has ever gotten there.
Check out our post on the milestone:
The Flyers held the old mark at 2,018 games. The Predators needed 2,020 when they hit 1,000 in January 2025. Minnesota came into the league as an expansion team in 2000-01, so a franchise that is not even 30 years old just passed two clubs with far longer histories.
The win pushed the Wild to 12-3-3, the best record in the Western Conference and the second-best in the NHL. They have won three straight and are 6-0-1 in their last seven.
Kirill Kaprizov did the heavy lifting, as he has all season. He scored his league-leading 16th goal on a 5-on-3 power play and added three assists, stretching his point streak to seven games. He also holds the franchise goals record at 246, and we covered his four-point night earlier.
Watch Kaprizov open the scoring:
Quinn Hughes had a goal and two assists. He became the fourth-fastest defenseman in NHL history to reach 100 multi-assist games, doing it in 525 games. Only Bobby Orr (437), Paul Coffey (459) and Denis Potvin (511) got there quicker, and Hughes has been climbing the Wild record book since he passed Pavol Demitra.
Here’s the Hughes goal that made it 3-1:
Jesper Wallstedt stopped 23 shots, and Zach Bogosian scored his first of the season late to close it out. Macklin Celebrini had the lone goal for San Jose, which has lost four in a row and sits at 7-10-1.
Minnesota gets Tampa Bay on Saturday, and forward Michael McCarron is questionable after leaving the third period with an undisclosed injury.
