Surprise pieces come up big to swing momentum back to Wild

St. Louis – As the second period ticked along, the hometown fans started to sound nervous, like parents about to watch their problem child in a school play.

Their team, with the bigger, stronger players and the better regular-season record, had dominated play for much of the game, piling up shots on goals and body blows, as the roars rained down.

Their team even scored the first goal, a feat that had foreshadowed victory in the first four games of the series.

That's when the Minnesota Wild somehow performed a hockey version of jujitsu, flipping the Blues, the script and the series. The Wild scored two second-period goals that stopped the Blues in their skate marks and led to a 4-1 victory at the Scottrade Center, giving Minnesota a 3-2 lead in the series.

It was predictable that if the Wild was to win Game 5, goalie Devan Dubnyk would have to perform well. What surprised was the identity of his supporting cast.

Former Blues forward Chris Stewart, 240 pounds of ineffectual board work for much of this series, seized the puck, wheeled behind the net and set up Nino Niederreiter's blazing shot for the lead.

Wild captain Mikko Koivu, who had scored one goal in 22 previous playoff games, took the puck to the goal line and snapped a shot that bounced off a Blues defender and into the net for a 3-1 lead and a rare goal for the first power-play unit.

Nearly every Wild player who had been missing from the action or the scorecard made his presence known on Friday.

"We don't care who gets the credit, but it's always nice to help out," Coyle said.

The Massachusetts native then invented a reason to use the word "hard," but he pronounced the word "haahhhd," as an inside joke on his accent, causing a couple of Wild employees to laugh and high-five him.

That was the mood following a blowout road victory in the most important game of the series.

Stewart often looked lost during the first period and a half on Friday. He had trouble winning puck battles, or even handling the puck when he had the chance. But the game might have turned when he and Blues agitator Steve Ott got into a skirmish, with Ott taking wild swings and both players going off for penalties.

"We felt like our game was going in the right direction," Coyle said.

The Wild generated little offensively 5-on-5 until Marco Scandella found himself with the puck at the far reaches of the left circle, launched a shot on goal … and watched it trickle off the top of Jake Allen's glove, pop in the air, hang there like a slow-motion highlight, and fall into the net.

"It was a lucky goal, but it gave us some life," Zach Parise said.

"We were playing so well," Blues coach Ken Hitchcock said. "That gave them a little bit of wind."

The Blues actually dominated play until Ott started punching Stewart in the head, and suddenly the Wild's 4-on-4, and Stewart, and the power play, and Koivu all came improbably alive.

"We've beaten a lot of good teams and won in a lot of different buildings," Wild coach Mike Yeo said.

One more victory, whenever and wherever, puts the Wild into the second round of the playoffs for a second straight year for the first time in franchise history.

Jim Souhan's podcast can be heard at souhanunfiltered.com. On