A four-goal second period plagued the Minnesota Wild in a 4-2 road loss to the Toronto Maple Leafs on Tuesday night.
Minnesota, fresh off its first win of the season Monday night in Ottawa, got on the board on a goal by Luke Kunin a little over five minutes into the first period and carried that lead into the first intermission.
But as soon as the second stanza started the wheels came off. Toronto got a goal from John Tavares just 1:58 into the period, then tallied back-to-back power-play goals 72 seconds apart, the first off the stick of Mitch Marner and the latter from Andreas Johnsson.
Austin Matthews’ seventh goal of the season made it a 4-1 game with just under six minutes left in the middle frame.
The first power-play tally gave Toronto a 2-1 lead, but the turning point came moments later when Wild forward Ryan Hartman was called for a holding penalty when Ryan Donato was on a breakaway.
It killed a scoring chance and put the Leafs back on the man advantage, and they wasted little time to strike again for a 3-1 lead.
The Wild cut the lead in half on Gerry Mayhew’s first NHL goal with one minute left in the game.
It’s the fourth time this season the Wild have had a catastrophic period doom them in a loss. Similar disasters happened against Nashville, Colorado, Winnipeg and Pittsburgh.
The Wild is now 1-5-0 with another eastern Canada road game coming up Thursday night against the Montreal Canadiens.
