The Minnesota Wild are continuing their miserable stretch to begin the season and on Saturday night, a little bit of puck luck went against them as they suffered a 4-3 overtime loss to the St. Louis Blues. The loss dropped the Wild to 4-10 on the season and kept them in last place in the Western Conference.
Although the Wild has had a rough start to the season, their first period bred cause for optimism. Minnesota took it to the defending Stanley Cup champions early, outshooting the Blues 10-6 in the opening frame and getting a goal from Marcus Foligno at 2:26 to take an early lead.
The good thoughts would stop there as the Blues were opportunistic on their opportunities and Mackenzie MacEachern would score his first goal of the season at 4:00 to tie things up. St. Louis headed into the locker room with the lead after the first period thanks to Carl Gunnarsson’s first goal of the season and the Wild would have to regroup from there.
That would lead to a strong second period from Minnesota with Kevin Fiala’s first goal of the season to tie things up at 1:01. Mats Zuccarello added a power-play goal at 4:39 and the Wild appeared to really take control with a goal from Mikko Koivu that would have put Minnesota up 4-2. Unfortunately, the goal would be overturned and the Blues took advantage to get back into the game.
Down 3-2 in the early stages of the third, Sammy Blais scored his fifth goal of the season to tie the game at 3 and we’d head to overtime where Ryan O’Reilly scored his fourth goal of the season to help the Blues escape St. Paul with a victory.
The Wild will continue to look for answers as they head west for a four-game road trip beginning on Tuesday night when they head to Anaheim to take on the Ducks.
