Postgame Hat Trick: Wild 5, Penguins 4 (SO)

Wild.com's Dan Myers gives three takeaways from the Wild's 5-4 shootout win against the Pittsburgh Penguins at PPG Paints Arena in Pittsburgh on Saturday night:

1. The comeback kids were at it again
It's become old hat for the Wild over the first couple weeks of the regular season. Fall behind in a game, then stage a dramatic comeback, pocket the two points and call it a night.
"It says we can't hold a lead," Wild coach Dean Evason said, smiling afterward. "We challenged [the players] after the first period that we have to learn to deal with success a little bit better than we have. We scored the early goal, we played really well again and then we've gotta understand that teams don't quit. This is the National Hockey League and they're just going to keep coming."

Kirill Kaprizov began the scoring midway through the first period, but Pittsburgh scored two late in the first and another midway through the second to open up a two-goal lead.
After the Wild halved that advantage and made it 3-2, Kasperi Kapanen finished off the hat trick with a goal that bounced off the crossbar, then off Alex Goligoski in front and in to re-establish the two-goal lead.
"But we were very resilient," Evason said. "And the group just stayed the course."
It's a good thing Saturday night's game happened in the Eastern Time Zone, so hopefully you didn't call it an evening too early, because Minnesota stormed back from a pair late in regulation, then earned the extra point in the shootout.
Minnesota has won seven times in its first 10 games. Six of those seven have come via the comeback, with few likely to come in more dramatic fashion than Saturday's two-goal uprising.
Evason pulled goaltender Cam Talbot with the Wild trailing 4-2 and four minutes left in regulation.
Jared Spurgeon started the comeback, whistling a shot from the point through traffic to make it a 4-3 game with 3:19 left.

After Talbot was pulled for the extra attacker a second time, Ryan Hartman finished off a mad scramble in front of the Penguins net with just 2.3 seconds remaining, tying the game at 4-4 in front of a stunned PPG Paints Arena.
After a thrilling back-and-forth overtime, where Talbot stoned former Wild forward Jason Zucker on a breakaway, Minnesota's goaltender came up big again in the shootout.
Kaprizov kept the shootout alive with a goal in the third round, setting up the former Penguin Nick Bjugstad, for a fourth-round winner.
For Bjugstad, who has been virtually automatic in the shootout, it was his sixth career game-deciding goal in the skills competition.

"I had a lot of reps down in Florida [with the Panthers early in my career]," Bjugstad said. "I kind of have my two ways I come down and then decide at the point of the shot and see where the goalie is at."
Bjugstad hadn't been on ice much in the final minutes of regulation or the entire overtime, so he said he tried to keep it pretty simple.
"Try not to overhandle it," Bjugstad said. "I saw an opening there and thankfully it went in."
2. Stay hot, Kirill
It took until overtime of the Wild's ninth game of the regular season for Kaprizov to score his first goal of the season.
It didn't take nearly as long for him to find his second.
All it took was 9 minutes, 44 seconds to be exact, as Kaprizov buried a loose puck near the blue paint after a bouncing shot from the point by Goligoski got through goaltender Tristan Jarry and bounced off the post.

Kaprizov admitted Thursday when he met with the Twin Cities media that he's been a notoriously slow starter in the goal-scoring category throughout his career.
Even after scoring the overtime winner in his Wild debut as a rookie, he went another six games before scoring his next goal, in a year where he tallied 27 goals in 55 games.

The hope is that breaking the goal-scoring seal like he did against Ottawa on Tuesday night in St. Paul will be exactly what the second-year man needs to kick his offensive campaign into overdrive, and the early results are certainly promising.
The goal was Kaprizov's 60th point in his 65th career game. Per NHL PR, that's the fastest any Wild player has ever reached 60 career points, besting Marian Gaborik's previous record of 93 games.
3. An apple a day keeps ... the GM away?
We'll see when it comes to Adam Beckman, who tallied his first NHL point on Saturday night when he dug out a loose puck behind the Penguins net, a second or two before Hartman's tying tally in regulation.
He was awarded an assist for his troubles.
But the fact he was on the ice in that situation in the first place is telling. It's not often a 20-year-old rookie playing in his fourth NHL game is on the ice in the final seconds of a game where his team needs a goal to stay alive.
Beckman was on the ice the first time Talbot was off for the extra attacker as well and also got some power play time.

"He's great. He was out there on the PP with us. He knows how to score and how to produce," Hartman said. "He's smart with the puck and he was engaged in the battle there, and was able to pull it out of the pile."
After the game, the cool-as-a-cucumber Beckman was being interviewed by Bally Sports North sideline reporter Kevin Gorg as Wild General Manager Bill Guerin stood watch just a couple feet away, grinning ear-to-ear the whole time.
Minnesota could get a host of reinforcements back in the coming days, with Mats Zuccarello and Rem Pitlick back as soon as tomorrow night from the COVID-19 protocol list, and Jordan Greenway from a lower-body injury (he's expected to resume skating soon).

Even with those players returning, Beckman has continued to show well off a terrific preseason and training camp in his first stint in the NHL.
Will it be enough to keep him with Minnesota for the near future? Time will tell.
"We talked to our group about trusting their teammates, changing properly, which we didn't do in the first period," Evason said. "If we don't trust that some other guys can get the job done, then why are we talking to our group about that? We made the decision to go to that group [late]. They were fresh, right-handed draw with Hartsy on that side, and it worked out in our favor."

Loose pucks

• Goligoski's assist was his fourth of the season and 350th of his NHL career
• Brodin now has a point in back-to-back contests
• Talbot finished with 35 saves on 39 shots
• Freddy Gaudreau had two assists and was a plus-2
• Jarry made 36 stops for the Penguins
• Kasperi Kapanen scored the first two goals of the game for Pittsburgh, his first two goals of the season
• Former Wild forward Jason Zucker assisted on both Penguins goals in the first period
• Penguins forward Evan Rodrigues also had two assists on the first-period goals
• Pittsburgh forward Bryan Rust returned from a lower-body injury and assisted on Guentzel's second-period tally

Dan's three stars

1. Jared Spurgeon
   2. Kasperi Kapanen
   3. Freddy Gaudreau

Highlights

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