COLUMBUS, Ohio — Riley Nash had a long wait to get his first goal as a Columbus Blue Jacket. When it finally came, it helped his team win.

Signed as a free agent last summer, Nash hadn’t been able to find the back of the net in 23 games this season. In fact, his last goal came 29 games ago when he was with Boston — against the Blue Jackets.

Nash redirected a pass from Zach Werenski in the second period to get the tally and had an assist on a first-period goal by Markus Hannikainen to help the Blue Jackets beat the Minnesota Wild 4-2 on Thursday night.

“I thought it was coming 20-something games ago,” said Nash, who had a career-high 15 goals and 41 points with Boston last season. “It’s one of the things where you just have to keep plugging away, and it’s going happen sooner or later. You hope sooner rather than later, but you can’t get frustrated by it.”

Nash skated with Hannikainen and Lukas Sedlak on the fourth line, which had a productive night.

“You just want to see him get rewarded,” Columbus coach John Tortorella said. “I think it will loosen him up. We’re still looking for more speed out of him. All players want stats. They want to score goals, they want to be on that piece of paper. Hopefully, it will relax him and just allow him to play quicker. I like the line. I think the line did some really good things for us.”

Cam Atkinson and Artemi Panarin also scored, and Sergei Bobrovsky stopped 23 shots to help the Blue Jackets move ahead of Washington for the Metropolitan Division lead. Columbus has won two in a row and six of eight.

Mikael Granlund and Zach Parise scored for Minnesota, and Devan Dubnyk made 25 saves. The Wild have lost two in a row and four of six.

“It’s gotten away from us, and we have to pull it back in,” Wild coach Bruce Boudreau said.

Granlund’s slap shot from the slot started it , putting the Wild on the board 7:46 into the game.

Hannikainen tapped in a bouncing puck later in the period to tie it.