Bench scuffle, four-goal rally highlight Wild win over Jets

ST. PAUL -- Bruce Boudreau knows old-time hockey when he sees it. And Friday's matinee affair between the Wild and Winnipeg Jets was the definition of old-time hockey.
Great rivalries are born from playoff series, and while the Wild and Jets hooked up in the postseason for the first time just last spring, the seeds were planted then for a Black Friday slugfest, complete with a bench brawl.
With the game tied at 2-2 and 5 1/2 minutes left in regulation, Winnipeg's Adam Lowry hit Minnesota's Joel Eriksson Ek with a high hit.

Nick Seeler didn't care for the hit, and approached Lowry at the bench door, who then shoved Seeler into the Jets bench.
Then there was bedlam.
Seeler started throwing punches while teammate Marcus Foligno followed him in and started mixing it up as well.
"Honestly, it was the weirdest thing. I think I blacked out. I looked up after I got off a dog pile and I realized I was right where their head coach usually stands, right in the middle of the bench," Foligno said. "I was like, 'Oh God, this is not good territory,' but I think when Seels gets pushed in there, you gotta do something. I think it's been our motto all year, when one guy gets tagged or does something and everyone steps in and jumps in and helps them."
The brawl was fueled by plenty of emotion on the Wild's side.
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Winnipeg scored a goal in each the first and the second period to take a two-goal lead into the final frame. The Wild outshot the Jets 16-6 in the third and began chipping away at its deficit.
First, it was Nino Niederreiter, demoted to the fourth line on Friday, scoring his third of the year 3:06 into third. Eight minutes later, another fourth liner, Eric Fehr, knotted things at 2.

A couple minutes later, Seeler and Foligno were in no-man's-land.

"That's never happened. It was a first experience," Seeler said. "But I guess you don't really know what's going to happen."
Boudreau has seen his share of bench brawls from back in his playing days -- and from his time on the set of the movie "Slapshot" -- but said he hasn't seen it in the NHL in a long time.
"A lot of weird stuff can happen. That's old-time hockey right there," Boudreau said. "I'm sure I'll watch it again tonight on TV. It gets everybody whether it's the crowd or whether it gets the players or whether it gets the coaches, it gets them all revved up. That was an emotional game that was fun."

Even after Lowry's initial penalty for the high hit on Eriksson Ek and his roughing infraction for his part in the fracas, the Wild came out of the equation even. Seeler and Jordan Greenway were assessed minor penalties for roughing and the clubs skated 5-on-5 for 48 more seconds until Ryan Suter was whistled for a controversial roughing call of his own.
Already peeved about its situation following the bench incident, the Wild bench was ... wild when Suter was hauled to the sin bin, putting a lethal Jets power play on the ice in a tie game with less than five minutes to play.
At that point, one of two things seemed destined to happen: The Jets would score and skate off with the win, or the Wild would kill it and translate that into a final push of its own.
"There was a lot of points around the game where you had momentum and you got a lot of momentum from it," Foligno said. "But like I said, it was just great to see us stay positive, keep coming. The fans were unbelievable in the third and we started getting going."
Sure enough, just 12 seconds after Suter's minor was killed, Eric Staal crashed the net and pushed a loose puck past Connor Hellebuyck and into the net.

Then there was bedlam ... again.
Staal's one-kneed fist pump seemed to break the tension of 19,000-plus Wild fans in attendance, letting out a scream that could seemingly be heard at the very top of the arena.

"It was a little aggressive, but I was excited," Staal said. "Sometimes you can't help it. It just happens. I think everyone in that pile was very excited. Even looking in the crowd, they were pretty pumped up. It was fun. Maybe not as much emotion in a November, but it was just the way the game went I think. It kind of ended up being that way."
Zach Parise added an empty-net goal with 1:09 left on the clock, icing what was one of the most emotional victories in quite a while.

Considering its opponent, it's rally and all the things it had to overcome in getting the win, a little emotion is to be expected.
"I think with anything the team you play in the playoffs the year before, I think there's a little more added incentive and a little more play a little bit grittier," Seeler said. "But we just wanted to stick to our game. We had a ton of opportunities tonight. Our forwards played really well and Al played awesome behind us. It was a fun night."
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Postgame Hat Trick: Wild 4, Jets 2