With Halloween less than two weeks away, maybe it was fitting that the Minnesota Wild were undone Thursday by a phantom goal.
Pierre-Luc Dubois scored twice in the last minute of the first period to break a 2-2 tie, the first of which he appeared to have kicked through Marc-Andre Fleury’s legs, and Minnesota never recovered in a 7-3 loss at Xcel Energy Center.
“We’ve gotta be better at being resilient and not letting that get to us,” head coach Dean Evason.
Connor Dewar, Kirill Kaprizov and Joel Eriksson Ek scored for the Wild, and Fleury stopped 21 of 26 shots. The Kings’ last two goals were empty netters after Evason pulled Fleury with more than 2 minutes to play.
But it was Dubois’ first goal that seemed to turn the tide — he scored a second 12 seconds later to put the Wild down 4-2 heading into the first intermission — and the Wild still weren’t convinced Dubois didn’t kick that puck past Fleury.
“I didn’t feel it hit my stick,” Dewar said. “I don’t know if it hit Brock (Faber’s), but it shouldn’t have come to that.”
In an email to the Pioneer Press, NHL executive vice president of hockey operations Kris King, part of the review team, said, “Review determined his stick made contact with the puck before it crossed the line.”
Fleury, expecting a stick to get the rolling puck, said he never saw it happen.
“Obviously, (it) would have been nice to get that one called back,” he said. “It is what it is. We’ve gotta move on right. It’s a long game, a lot of minutes that we played, so keep doubling down and keep pushing.”
Kevin Fiala earned the first assist on both of Dubois’ goals, starting the go-ahead marker with a blind outlet pass off the boards. On the second, he found Dubois in the slot, and he shot through traffic to beat Fleury clean.
“That was huge,” said Fiala, who left Minnesota as a free agent to join L.A. after the 2021-22 season. “They had the lead there right, and then we tied it and then we came right back and had a lead, I don’t know, a minute or whatever we scored two goals. I think that was for sure a momentum switch.”
Former Wild goaltender Cam Talbot, traded to Ottawa after the Wild signed Fleury to a two-year contract extension in July 2021, stopped 30 shots for the Kings.
The Wild had their chances, 0 for 4 in the power play while never taking a penalty themselves. Freddy Gaudreau hit a post in the first period, Eriksson Ek had two point-blank shots from the crease, and a Ryan Hartman one-timer was deflected high. Mats Zuccarello was stopped from the slot, and a Jonas Brodin one-timer missed the net.
“Our power play has to be better in a game like that,” Evason said. “We needed them to score, obviously, tonight and we didn’t have a penalty kill. Our special teams could have made the difference here and tonight and they did not.”
Trevor Moore put the final nail in the Wild’s coffin when he got a rebound off a blocked shot in the high slot and beat Fleury to make it 5-2 at 10:13 of the third period. Eriksson Ek scored — his fourth goal this season — to pull Minnesota within 5-3 with 5:22 left in the third period, but it was too little too late.
After falling behind early on a Carl Grunderstrom goal that glanced off Fleury, the Wild tied when Jon Merrill dumped a puck into the offensive zone off the glass and it bounced right to a rushing Dewar, who skated through the slot and fired a diagonal shot behind him that found the far corner to make it 1-1.
Kaprizov tied it when he redirected a Brodin one-timer from the high slot. The Kings lost a challenge for an offsides call, but the Wild couldn’t make hay on the ensuing power play, although Gaudreau hit a crossbar, and Los Angeles regained the initiative.
“It’s funny, it’s like you lose composure, yet you don’t take a penalty,” Evason said. “Weird, right? But we got frustrated with some stuff and we couldn’t pull ourselves out of it.”
Weird, indeed. And until the NHL releases the video that convinced them Dubois had touched that puck, a mystery.
“Hopefully we do talk to the league and (see) who touched it, because we went back in and there’s no touch,” Evason said. “It certainly didn’t seem like it unless they have another angle. We didn’t see a touch.”
