Minnesota United continues to have Real Salt Lake’s number.

After dispatching RSL in the MLS Cup Playoffs last fall, the Loons used two Tani Oluwaseyi goals to win 2-0 on chilly and soaking wet Saturday night at Allianz Field.

It was the most open game between the two teams in years. They had played to six straight draws, including both playoff games, which ended in shootout wins for MNUFC.

The Loons (3-1-2, 11 points) are now unbeaten in five matches and created more separation on RSL (2-4-0, 6 points).

Here are three takeaways:

Oluwaseyi on a roll

Oluwaseyi scored his first international goal for Canada against the U.S. men’s national team last Sunday and he kept his run alive with MNUFC.

The 6-foot-2 striker rose up and finished a header in the 30th minute to give MNUFC the lead. He received a great on-the-platter pass from Jefferson Diaz.

In the 55th, Oluwaseyi ran onto a pass from Joaquin Pereyra and blasted it into the back of the net for a brace.

Oluwaseyi scored his first two goals of the season in the 3-3 draw with Sporting Kansas City on March 15, the game before he headed to the CONCACAF Nations League last weekend.

So that’s five goals in his last three starts for club and country.

Commitment to the bit

Loons supporters booed Salt Lake defender Brayan Vera every time he touched the ball on Saturday. Fans did not forget how Vera spit at Minnesota captain Michael Boxall late last season.

Boxall anticipated the jeering but said Friday he doesn’t hold grudges or lean into rivalries.

“I approach each game the same way,” Boxall said. “Just trying to lay off the yellow cards. Just make sure I’m available. There are times when you are preparing for games and played well or played badly when I hype things up or play well or play badly when you are calm and relaxed. I just try to do things consistently.”

Dotson done?

Hassani Dotson might have played his last game in a Loons shirt.

Amid a dispute over a contract extension, the to-be free agent had surgery to repair a torn meniscus on Wednesday. The central midfielder is expected to be out “months” and that might extend all season long.

“Thank you for all your kind and uplifting messages,” Dotson wrote on Instagram. “The support means a lot during this tough time.”

The Loons’ current three-man midfield — as opposed to last season’s four — lessens the blow associated with Dotson’s injury.

MNUFC still has starters in Robin Lod, Joaquin Pereyra and Wil Trapp, with backups Owen Gene and Hoyeun Jung. Defenders Carlos Harvey and Joseph Rosales can fill in during a pinch, too.

“I don’t feel like we are short of options there,” Ramsay said. “That’s not to say if something was very readily available that the club wouldn’t look at that.”

The primary transfer window is open until April 23.

Gene, who subbed in Saturday, took a crunching tackle and subbed out with an apparent right leg injury.

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The Minnesota Wild were able to dig themselves out of an early two-goal hole on Saturday, but they couldn’t overcome Nico Hischier’s three-goal night.

In a game with all of the bad blood normal for historical division rivals — an oddity for a team Minnesota sees just twice a year — the New Jersey Devils led early and never trailed, holding off the Wild in a 5-2 win.

Goals by Marcus Foligno and Ryan Hartman weren’t enough offense, as Minnesota lost for the third time in the past four games. Wild goalie Filip Gustavsson had 28 saves in the loss.

For New Jersey, which had been blanked in Winnipeg one night earlier, Hischier turned in his second hat trick of the season and goalie Jacob Markstrom had 22 saves, holding off several notable pushes by the Wild after the visitors established an early 2-0 lead.

Trailing 3-2 in the third, Minnesota had a late power play but could not find the equalizer. Then New Jersey got a power play and Hischier completed the hat trick, sending the Wild’s largest crowd of the season home disappointed.

The game’s opening 29 seconds featured odd-man rushes by both teams in both directions, and when the first whistle arrived, New Jersey led by a goal. Minnesota had gotten a 2-on-1 break off the opening faceoff but did not get a shot off. Then, with two Wild players caught in the offensive zone, the Devils stormed back the other way, with Gustavsson stopping a Jesper Bratt shot, but Hischier popped in the rebound.

Roughly five minutes later, the Devils doubled their lead on another odd-man rush when, again, Gustavsson made the initial save, only to have the rebound slip between his knees when fourth-liner Paul Cotter fired from low on the goal line.

But all was not lost in the first as the Wild got on the board late in the frame to cut the deficit in half. Jared Spurgeon’s shot from the high slot was deflected in front by Foligno, with the puck bouncing hard off the ice and fluttering over the goalie’s right shoulder. It was the 12th goal of the season for Foligno and his first since returning from a five-game absence due to injury.

Foligno was all over the score sheet on Saturday, taking an embellishment penalty that had the Wild bench offering choice words for the officials, and dropping the gloves for a second period tussle with Devils defenseman Johnathan Kovacevic after Foligno had hit another New Jersey blueliner into the end boards.

New Jersey maintained a 2-1 lead at the end of a scrappy second period, and were inches away from extending the advantage in the final seconds when Hischier’s shot toward a mostly open net glanced off the skate of his teammate, Timo Meier, and went wide of the crease.

Hischier finally got his second of the game and dampened the sellout crowd’s hopes of a comeback when his wrist shot from just inside the blue line glanced off Wild captain Jared Spurgeon’s shin pad and fluttered past Gustavsson’s glove, off the post and in. It was the fourth multi-goal game of the season for Hischier.

But the Wild again had an answer when Hartman poked a loose puck in the crease over the line after a Foligno deflection had hit the crossbar behind the Devils goalie. The Wild got a power play a short time later when former Gophers standout Erik Haula tripped up Yakov Trenin on a rush to the net, but Minnesota managed just one shot during the two minutes of man advantage.

Hischier and Tomas Tatar scored late for the Devils, who will be the home team when they face Minnesota again on Monday.

After playing 10 of their last 11 games at home, the Wild next embark on a three-game road trip to the New York City area, visiting the Devils first, then the New York Rangers on Wednesday and the New York Islanders on Friday before playing three of their last five regular season games at home.

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ST. LOUIS — Mickey Gasper grounded a ball towards the hole at short and then started his sprint towards first. When he reached the bag, he stretched out his arms, signifying safe. First base umpire Mike Estabrook agreed.

The first hit of his career was a long-time coming for the 29-year-old, who made his first career Opening Day roster earlier in the week and now has a hit to show for it after 23 plate appearances last year with the Boston Red Sox that did not yield a hit.

“I was excited,” he said. “I was trying to start an inning, get us back in the game.”

His hit, which came in the eighth inning of the Twins’ 5-1 loss to the St. Louis Cardinals on Saturday at Busch Stadium, was the Twins’ first since the second inning on a slow day for the offense.

Gasper flew out in each of his first two at-bats, before finally getting that long-awaited hit his third time up.

“That’s why you run hard down the line,” Gasper said. “I always got yelled at by my dad to run hard, so it just turned out wet grass today. (shortstop Masyn) Winn made a nice play getting up on his belly and I was able to beat it out.”

Gasper, a career .275 hitter in the minors, got his first taste of the majors last season, called up in August by the Red Sox. He played in parts of 13 different games, going 0 for 18 and sending him into the 2025 season on the hunt for his first hit.

“There’s nothing wrong with failure. You’ve got to learn. That’s a part of life and especially a part of this game,” Gasper said during spring training. “To fail at (the major league) level and to have a little bit of success but for the most part, kind of get punched in the mouth a little bit, it sets me up to be hungry for sure, I’ll tell you that.”

Now, finally, he has a hit to his name, and some of his loved ones — his parents and fiancée — were in attendance to witness it in person after watching him through years of hard work.

“That’s why you play, for them,” he said. “All the hours my dad, my mom put in getting me to practices and games, coaching, it’s really all for them.”

Top of lineup searching

Gasper’s hit was one of just three for the Twins on Saturday. None of those three came from Matt Wallner, Carlos Correa or Byron Buxton, the three hitters batting atop the Twins’ lineup.

That trio is a combined 0 for 23 on the season, despite some hard-hit balls. On Saturday, Correa hit three balls over 100 miles per hour (105.1, 101.8, 100.6) with nothing to show for it. Buxton’s seventh-inning groundout was struck at 102.2 mph.

“We want to keep just barreling a lot of balls,” manager Rocco Baldelli said. “We’ve had some guys hit some balls hard. … The guys who are swinging it good but not getting much out of it, they need to keep doing what they’re doing and not try to do something else.”

Briefly

Bailey Ober is expected to start Sunday’s series finale against the St. Louis Cardinals but a forecast calling for storms in the afternoon may threaten that game. … With a single in the second inning on Saturday, Trevor Larnach extended his hitting streak to six games dating back to last year, which is a career high.

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In sports like baseball and college hockey, playing multiple consecutive games versus the same opponent is common. In the NHL, it’s a decidedly unique set of circumstances.

Minnesota Wild coach John Hynes played college hockey at Boston University and was a college assistant coach at UMass Lowell and at Wisconsin for one season each, so he may get reacquainted with the whole “familiar foe” concept over the next few days.

With the Wild hosting the New Jersey Devils on Saturday, then visiting the Devils in Newark on Monday to begin a three-game road trip, Hynes was reflective on the pros and cons of seeing the same opponent twice in a row. Most notably, for a team with the expectation of making the playoffs, where you face the same opponent between four and seven games in a row, it could be good prep for next month.

“It’s a little bit like playoffs in the sense that you get prepared for the team, and then you play them and then you’re focusing on that game again going into the next game,” Hynes said. “So, sometimes the adjustments or teaching points are truly specific to the other team.”

Hynes, 50, got his first NHL head coaching job nearly a decade ago when the Devils hired him, and he spent parts of five seasons there. So, if the Wild need to play a back-to-back foe, at least it’s a familiar one for the coach. It’s also a well-known sweater for Wild general manager Bill Guerin, who began his NHL career in New Jersey and played nearly 400 games for the Devils over seven seasons, including winning a Stanley Cup there in 1995 when they posted a four-game sweep of the Detroit Red Wings to claim the franchise’s first NHL title.

“It’s a little unique, but I don’t mind it,” Hynes said.

Three more Gophers NHL-bound

In addition to hanging another Big Ten champion banner over the summer, the wall inside 3M Arena at Mariucci which honors Minnesota Gophers who have played in the NHL will need some notable updating. One day after Gophers leading scorer Jimmy Snuggerud signed a three-year contract with the St. Louis Blues to forgo his final season of college eligibility, another trio of prominent players traded in their maroon and gold sweaters for NHL duds, and the accompanying paycheck.

On Saturday morning, the Chicago Blackhawks announced their signing of forward Oliver Moore and defenseman Sam Rinzel to entry-level contracts.

Moore, who won a gold medal for Team USA at the 2025 World Juniors, was fourth on the Gophers’ stat sheet offensively this season as a sophomore, after Chicago picked him in the first round (19th overall) in the 2023 NHL Draft.

Rinzel, who Chicago grabbed 25th overall in 2022, was named the Big Ten’s defensive player of the year as a sophomore after putting up 10 goals and 22 assists in 40 games for the Gophers. Both players practiced with the Blackhawks in Chicago on Saturday and are expected to make their respective NHL debuts on Sunday when the Utah Hockey Club visits the United Center.

A few hours after Chicago’s announcement, the Nashville Predators inked Gophers forward Matthew Wood to an entry-level pact of his own. Wood, who played his junior season at Minnesota after transferring from UConn, was a 2023 first round pick of the Predators and was second on the Gophers offensively last season with 17 goals and 22 assists in 39 games.

Nashville and Chicago have already been eliminated from the Western Conference playoff race meaning that the season for Wood, Rinzel and Moore will end in mid April. Snuggerud may get a taste of playoff hockey with the Blues, who have made a furious charge late in the season under midseason replacement coach Jim Montgomery and are in a good position to grab a wild-card spot.

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