ST. PAUL, Minn. — The Wild won home-ice advantage for the first round of the playoffs but lost a key player.
Marcus Foligno left injured after getting kneed by the Avalanche's Kurtis MacDermid, an ominous exit that loomed over an edgy regular-season finale, but the Wild prevailed 4-1 on Friday in front of 19,261 at Xcel Energy Center to put an exclamation point on the fact it will host Game 1 of its Western Conference playoff series against the Blues.
A St. Louis loss earlier in the evening clinched that for the Wild, which locked up second place in the Central Division with a franchise-high 113 points. But the team's lineup for the playoff opener is to be determined.
Foligno was hurt 5 minutes, 28 seconds into the first period when he was clipped by MacDermid after tipping a puck up the boards, a collision that spun Foligno to the ice. He was face down until eventually getting helped up and escorted down the tunnel from the bench. The Wild later announced Foligno suffered a lower-body injury and would not return.
MacDermid was tossed from the action, receiving a five-minute major for kneeing and game misconduct.
That situation only inflamed an already testy atmosphere.
Minutes earlier, Colorado's Logan O'Connor pushed Dmitry Kulikov into the boards, and that led to a lengthy brawl between O'Connor and the Wild's Brandon Duhaime. O'Connor was penalized for boarding, and both players were dinged for the fight with Duhaime also getting punished with an instigating minor and a 10-minute misconduct.
By then, the Wild was already ahead by a goal.
Just 58 seconds after puck drop and on the team's second shot, Jordan Greenway took a Foligno pass and slipped a puck between Avalanche goalie Pavel Francouz and the post.
That lead doubled at 4:12 when Kirill Kaprizov circled the zone before finding Tyson Jost in the slot for a one-timer and Jost's second goal with the Wild since a trade from Colorado, which was resting some of its go-to players like Nathan MacKinnon, Cale Makar and Darcy Kuemper.
Jost secured his 20th point of the season on the play and so did Jon Merrill with an assist, giving the Wild 16 players with at least 20 points.
The rest of the first period was filled with penalties; both sides combined for five infractions the rest of the way, but neither power play converted. Overall, the Wild went 0 for 5 and the Avalanche 0 for 4.
Kaprizov picked up a second point at 3:46 of the second when he poked in a loose puck in the crease to finish with 47 goals. Add in his 61 assists, and he racked up an impressive 108 points that rank fifth in the NHL. All three tallies are franchise records for a single season, and Kaprizov is the Wild's first top-10 scorer.
This was also Kaprizov's 45th career multipoint game; among active players, only Sidney Crosby (67), Alex Ovechkin (58) and Evgeni Malkin (51) had more through their first two seasons. He concluded the regular season on a seven-game point streak in which he registered 15 points.
Captain Jared Spurgeon's assist on Kaprizov's goal was his 30th, a career high. He and fellow defenseman Matt Dumba returned from their respective upper-body injuries, but the Wild was still without Mats Zuccarello (lower body).
Greenway flipped his second goal of the game into an empty net with 32 seconds to go, his 10th of the season.
Marc-Andre Fleury was in net for the Wild, and he made 27 stops to improve to 9-2 since a trade from the Blackhawks. The only puck that eluded him was a shot by Nazem Kadri at 5:38 of the second period. Francouz had 18 saves for Colorado.
