Game Recap: Wild 4, Hurricanes 3 (S/O)

ST. PAUL, Minn. -- Jesper Wallstedt made 42 saves and the Minnesota Wild held off the Carolina Hurricanes late push with a 4-3 shootout win at Grand Casino Arena on Wednesday.

“I think maybe we didn’t bring our best game, but the effort was there in all situations,” Wallstedt said. “Guys were sacrificing themselves with blocks. They’re backchecking as hard as they could. Maybe everything didn’t click for us today, but you cannot say that the effort was not there. I think that shows how strong of a team we are even though we maybe didn’t have our best game. … Very nice, very nice two points.”

Despite striking first and leading the entirety of the game, Minnesota allowed Carolina back in by giving up two goals. With Frederik Andersen pulled for the extra attacker, Jackson Blake ultimately sent the game to overtime with his second goal of the night when he crashed the net for the rebound between Wallstedt’s pads at 18:54 of the third period to tie it 3-3.

Wallstedt denied Blake of the hat trick with a pad save on a breakaway at 4:06 of overtime, one of two shots he faced from Blake in the extra period before the game was decided by a shootout.

“Would have liked to put that one in in overtime, would have really capped that one off, but I thought for the most part we played well,” Blake said. “… We got a point as a group, and I liked the way we kind of finished there, we were hungry. … But would have been better if we got the win.”

Matt Boldy scored the only goal in the third round of the shootout, extending Minnesota's point streak to six games (5-0-1).

Mats Zuccarello had a goal and an assist, Brock Faber also scored, and Danila Yurov had two assists for the Wild (10-7-4), who have won three straight. Wallstedt, who had not allowed a goal in 175:12, saved 42-of-45 shots faced.

“I thought in the first period we played really well, and then I thought they took control of the game, particularly in the second period,” Minnesota coach John Hynes said. “I thought in the third we got back to some things that we needed to do. But tonight's game, we had a good start. I thought we had some opportunistic scoring. We got great goaltending. It's not always going to be picture perfect every night, but the most important thing is you got to be able to, I think, take some things out of this, of why the game turned a little bit, but also we won the game. We've got to move on to get ready for another one as well.”

Blake scored twice for the Hurricanes (13-5-2), who have lost two of their past three (1-0-2) but are 6-1-2 in their past nine. Andersen made 15 saves.

“I thought we played great,” Carolina coach Rod Brind’Amour said. “Obviously, we gave’em a couple breakaways. Those are the ones you can’t do but you take those away, I mean you gotta give them credit when they had their chances, they buried them, and their goalie played great. But I love the way we played. Especially getting down two right away, we just kept going.

“So I give the guys full marks. Overtime we had all our chances. It’s one of those nights we just didn’t get rewarded for what we put out there.”

Faber deflected in a Zuccarello shot off his shinpad for a quick 1-0 lead for the Wild at 1:54 of the first period.

Boldy increased the lead 2-0 at 11:46 with the first short-handed goal of his career on the breakaway. Boldy has four goals and three assists in a five-game point streak.

“I’ll take it,” Boldy said. “Yeah, I’ll take it. Is what it is. A goal’s a goal.”

Blake cut the deficit 2-1 at 14:03 of the second period, tipping in a Sean Walker shot five-hole on Wallstedt. Blake's goal was the first 5-on-5 goal the Wild had allowed in 302:43.

Zuccarello made it 3-1, 15 seconds into the third period on the breakaway for his first goal of the season.

Sebastian Aho picked the right corner to bring it 3-2 at 6:34. Andrei Svechnikov passed between Joel Eriksson Ek’s legs to find Aho in the left circle for the wrist shot.

“Tough bounce there early in the third but could go either way," Aho said. "You could either mail it or keep fighting, and we kept fighting. We were able to find a couple goals. Got a point. Obviously you’d like to see two points there but boys battled hard.”

NOTES: Wallstedt’s shutout sequence of 175:12 was the longest by a rookie since Anaheim’s John Gibson (184:30 from Dec. 27, 2015 – Jan. 3, 2016). At 5-0-2, Wallstedt became the second goaltender in franchise history with points in each of his first seven appearances during a season, following Niklas Backstrom (6-0-1 from Oct. 11-27, 2008). … With his third period goal, Aho reached 650 career points (291 goals, 359 assists) in 697 games played.