What looked like a walkaway win turned into another fantastic game between the Minnesota Wild and Dallas Stars.
After blowing a 3-0 lead, the Wild needed to rally to score the game’s tying goal – scored by Thomas Vanek – to force overtime, where Vanek and Zach Parise assisted on the game-winning goal by Marco Scandella. Final score: Wild 5, Stars 4.
The Wild jumped out to a 3-0 lead midway through the second period, but then the wheels fell off and the Stars rallied for four unanswered goals. Here’s how it all went down.
Goals from Nino Neiderreiter and Jason Zucker put the Wild up 2-0 after one period. Mikael Granlund’s third goal of the season midway through the second gave the Wild a dominating three-goal lead. That’s when all heck broke lose.
Dallas rallied for three goals in a three minute and 31-second stretch of the second. Scoring for the Stars were Ales Hemsky, Tyler Seguin (his NHL leading 18th goal) and Erik Cole, whose goal came with just 10 seconds left in the period. Wild goalie Darcy Kuemper allowed the quick strikes.
Once Darcy Kuemper gets rattled, it seems there's no coming back. He's allowed three the last four minutes and suddenly this game is tied.
— Chad Graff (@ChadGraff) November 29, 2014
The score stayed tied until Alex Goligoski’s first goal of the season, with 6 1/2 minutes left in the third period, gave the Stars its first lead of the game, 4-3. Goligoski scored moments after Neiderreiter narrowly missed his second goal of the game.
Minnesota head coach Mike Yeo elected to pull Kuemper with 2:01 left in the game. The move paid off nine seconds later as Thomas Vanek’s second goal of the season tied the game, 4-4.
#mnwild has 12 regulation/OT wins – only 2 teams in West (Vancouver, St. Louis) have more.
— Minnesota Wild (@mnwild) November 29, 2014
Minnesota is back in action Saturday at home against the St. Louis Blues.
