Wild escape Senators’ surge for 3-2 win, make headway in wild-card race

The Wild’s top scorers weren’t invisible.

Matt Boldy buried a Kirill Kaprizov pass while Joel Eriksson Ek was close enough to the net to reach a rebound if there was one.

But the first line wasn’t the difference between the Wild winning and losing: Their fourth line was.

After Mason Shaw opened the scoring, Vinni Lettieri finished it to bookend a 3-2 victory over the Senators Tuesday night at Xcel Energy Center with a timely lift from the Wild’s depth players.

This was the team’s eighth win in its last 13 games, and it ended a five-game streak for Ottawa.

“We put in the work every single day,” Lettieri said. “Obviously, we’re not going to get as many chances as Kirill’s line or like those guys do. But when we have our chances, we just try to keep the momentum going and try to capitalize.”

Lettieri broke a 2-2 tie with 6 minutes, 56 seconds left in the third period when he backhanded in a puck that bounced into the middle after Shaw applied pressure to the Senators along the boards.

The goal was Lettieri’s first since Dec. 18.

“I was very lucky that it got to me the way it did,” he said. “I didn’t really have too much time. Just tried to beat the goalie quick underneath his blocker.”

With their competition in the Western Conference wild-card race idle, the Wild gained ground on St. Louis and Los Angeles: They’re three points behind the Blues and six shy of the Kings for the last playoff spot with eight games left on their schedule.

NHL standings

But this performance still had its flaws.

The Wild tested Ottawa goalie Joonas Korpisalo infrequently in the first period, racking up just five shots, but they connected on their second attempt when Shaw buried a slick cross-zone pass from Zach Bogosian at 12:32.

“That was a big goal for us,” coach John Hynes said. “We didn’t have much going on until then.”

This was Shaw’s first goal in his 13th game with the Wild this season after recovering from a fourth ACL tear suffered last April 1 at Vegas.

“That’s probably one I’ll remember, for sure,” Shaw said. “That was special.”

Boldy doubled the Wild’s advantage just 49 seconds into the second period when he flung the puck by Korpisalo (17 saves) for his 26th goal.

Kaprizov’s assist was his 317th point, which tied him with Mikael Granlund for eighth in Wild history.

But the Senators improved as the period progressed and at 7:43, they started to rally on the power play when Drake Batherson roofed the puck over goalie Marc-Andre Fleury (30 saves) seconds after Tim Stutzle hit the post.

Ottawa’s next power play delivered the equalizer: An uncontested one-timer by Jakob Chychrun 2:42 into the third period that Batherson and Stutzle set up.

“A couple blown assignments,” Hynes said about the 1-for-3 showing by the penalty kill.

BOXSCORE: Wild 3, Ottawa 2

As for the Wild, they blanked on four power plays.

But unlike Saturday when they blew a third-period lead to Vegas before pulling their goalie and giving up an empty-net goal in overtime to forfeit a point for an unusual 2-1 loss, the Wild reset before regulation ran out.

“We gotta continue to grow in that area of understanding playing winning hockey and what it takes to win regularly,” Hynes said, “and at times we stray from it. We stray from it sometimes in games, and I thought tonight we strayed from it in a lot of different areas.”

Because of two goals from the fourth line, those lapses didn’t come back to haunt the Wild.

“By no means are we towering over anybody on the ice,” Shaw said. “But we know what our role is and what we gotta bring every night. You always wish that you could probably help out a little more on the scoresheet. But tonight it felt really good, especially late there.

“It’s a big goal for our line, big goal for Vinni, but just the team more than anything else right now.”