COLUMBUS. OHIO – The Wild is starting to play like it did earlier in the season, but the transformation isn't complete.
Wild gives up late tying goal, eventually loses to Columbus 3-2 in shootout
Zach Werenski scored with 32 seconds left in regulation to tie the score, then the Blue Jackets' Yegor Chinakhov netted the only goal of the shootout.
March 12, 2022 at 4:43AM
After back-to-back wins following a woeful two weeks, the Wild stumbled late to fade 3-2 in a shootout to the Blue Jackets on Friday in front of 16,399 at Nationwide Arena and split its two-game road trip.
Overall, the Wild is 2-0-1 in its past three games and 2-2-1 over the past five.
"It's tougher to accept the loss when you feel like you should have won and played good," Mats Zuccarello said.
Columbus' Yegor Chinakhov scored the lone shootout goal after Zach Werenski delivered the equalizer with 32 seconds to go in the third period and the Blue Jackets' goalie pulled for an extra attacker.
This finish trumped what was until that point a solid showing by the Wild led by its best players.
Zuccarello had a goal and assist to inch closer to a milestone, Kirill Kaprizov scored his team-leading and career-best 30th goal and Kevin Fiala pushed his point streak to six games.
All three, however, were blanked in the shootout. Between the pipes, Kaapo Kahkonen turned aside 26 shots but dropped a fifth straight start.
"Not that we deserved better, but we've done this to a lot of teams, too," coach Dean Evason said. "What goes around comes around sometimes."
A night after it set a franchise record with its seventh multi-goal comeback of the season, rallying to win 6-5 in a shootout at Detroit, the Wild had to be persistent yet again.
The Blue Jackets scored first, at 13:31 of the first period on a power play shot by Chinakhov, and Columbus had a glorious opportunity to double that lead on a four-minute power play later in the first.
But a tenacious penalty kill effort by rookie Connor Dewar, who was back in action after being a healthy scratch for two games, not only drained some of the clock but also drew a penalty.
Then, after Columbus was called for another infraction, the Wild went to the power play in the final minute of the period and Kaprizov dazzled with a blistering top-shelf shot at 19:34.
Kaprizov is the seventh player in Wild history to reach the 30-goal plateau and first to do so since Eric Staal and Jason Zucker in 2017-18. The only Wild player to hit that benchmark in fewer games than Kaprizov's 56 is Marian Gaborik three times (47 in 2006-07, 48 in 2005-06 and 53 in 2007-08).
The second-year winger is also on an eight-game point streak that's tied for the longest of his career.
Zuccarello's assist was his 16th on the power play, tying his career high from 2017-18, and Fiala's helper moved him one point shy of matching his personal best in points (54) set in 2019-20.
In the second period, the Wild dominated the puck and was rewarded with the go-ahead goal: a deflection by Zuccarello that dribbled behind Columbus goalie Elvis Merzlikins at 13:33; Merzlikins ended up with 36 stops.
That goal, Zuccarello's 19th, bumped him up to 60 points, one back of the career-high 61 he racked up in 2015-16 with the New York Rangers. He's the 14th Wild player to record at least 60 points in a season.
"Getting older, learn to keep yourself positive even in tough stretches," Zuccarello said. "Just trying to do the right things. Obviously when the team does well, you feed off of that. The confidence is high."
But not widening its lead stung the Wild, and the power play whiffed on the chance to provide that lift. The team had three looks after Zuccarello's goal but didn't take advantage of any to finish 1-for-5; the Blue Jackets went 1-for-4.
"That puts the game away," Evason said. "We got cute. We were throwing sauce passes. Just stay the course. Everything else, we do the same things, and we get on the power play and it's like all of a sudden we're going to reinvent the wheel."
As much as the results are starting to trend in a different direction, the Wild still has strides to make.
"If we play games like this, we're going to win more than we're going to lose," Zuccarello said. "Just have to keep it up."
The Wild have been the surprise of the league as their high-scoring winger makes a shambles of team scoring records.
