ST. PAUL — The Minnesota Wild got their first taste of the Western Conference this season in their 7-3 loss to the Los Angeles Kings inside Xcel Energy Center on Thursday night.
The result tasted bitter.
The Wild started their schedule this season in the Eastern Conference with matchups against the Florida Panthers, Toronto Maple Leafs and Montreal Canadiens. But on Thursday, Minnesota played an L.A. team in the West that features a formidable 1-2-3 punch down the middle.
The Wild struggled to score and get past the Kings and former teammates Cam Talbot (29 saves) and Kevin Fiala after surrendering two back-breaking goals in the final minute of the first period to the Kings’ offseason trade acquisition from Winnipeg in center Pierre-Luc Dubois.
“It’s like you lose composure, yet you don’t take a penalty — weird, right?” head coach Dean Evason said. “But we got frustrated with some stuff and we couldn’t pull ourselves out of it. But, yeah, the first period, it wasn’t bad until the last few minutes, obviously, when they scored a couple goals.
“We’ve gotta be better at being resilient and not letting that get to us.”
The pair of goals by Dubois — both assisted by Fiala — came 12 seconds apart, so Dubois is now the fastest player to score back-to-back goals against the Wild in their history.
The Wild suddenly found themselves down 4-2 after the first period instead of a 2-2 tie. All four of the Kings' goals were at five-on-five, a recipe for disaster.
Carl Grundstrom took the first shot of the game from the right circle and it beat Marc-Andre Fleury — who got a piece of it with his glove — short side 2:39 into the contest to give the Kings an early 1-0 lead.
It took the Wild only three minutes and 42 seconds to respond.
Jon Merrill’s dump-in took a lucky bounce off the stanchion and landed in the slot for Connor Dewar, who fired the puck past Talbot high glove at 6:21 to even the score.
Dewar and Brandon Duhaime, who have gelled with Pat Maroon on the fourth line, both have two goals in four games to start the season in what is a contract year for both of them.
Then Kirill Kaprizov scored the go-ahead marker for his second goal of the season on Jonas Brodin’s shot from the point at the eight minute mark.
Vladislav Gavrikov tied the game at two apiece with 4:14 left in the first when his backhander through traffic from the slot got past Fleury.
The final minute of the first period proved costly for the Wild.
Dubois beat Dewar in a foot race for the puck, kicked it forward and the puck slid past Fleury five-hole with 58 seconds left. The goal was reviewed for kicking motion, but the NHL deemed the puck hit Dubois’ stick after he kicked it — but Evason said “we went back in and there’s no touch."
12 seconds later, Dubois beat Fleury again, this time high-blocker from the left hash marks to give L.A. a 4-2 lead going into the middle frame.
“We definitely would have been in a better spot, for sure, but having said that, we weren’t — and we’ve got to find a better way to get back after it,” Evason said in regards to if the score would have been tied heading into the second.
“And we didn’t give up a goal in the second, so it wasn’t like we completely imploded, but we didn’t like our response, for sure.”
The Wild couldn’t recover from their woes in the final minute of the first despite outplaying the Kings in the second with 68.95 percent of the five-on-five expected goal share, according to Natural Stat Trick, with plenty of scoring chances.
“Frustrating is exactly the word we’re going to use,” Jake Middleton said.
Then in the third period, Trevor Moore — who leads the Kings with four goals this season — found a loose puck in the left circle, drove to the net and fired it past Fleury short side under the bar for a 5-2 lead with 9:47 left.
Joel Eriksson Ek scored his team-leading fourth goal of the season to cut the Wild’s deficit to 5-3 with 5:22 left in the contest when he one-timed a cross-slot feed from Marcus Johansson past Talbot glove side.
Aside from Eriksson Ek’s goal in the third, the Wild didn’t execute when they had their chances in the final two periods. Adrian Kempe and Blake Lizotte added empty net markers 2:39 and 1:08 remaining, and Fleury allowed five goals allowed on 27 shots in the loss.
“We shouldn’t have to score five, six goals to win a game, though,” Dewar said. “(We) kind of shot ourselves in the foot.”
After scoring five goals in special teams situations against the Canadiens on Tuesday, the Wild went 0-for-5 on the power play Thursday night.
“Our power play has to be better in a game like that, right?” Evason said. “Our special teams could have made the difference here — and tonight they did not.”
The Wild, now 2-2, will look to rebound as they continue their three-game homestand against Columbus on Saturday and Edmonton on Tuesday.
“We’re not super happy,” Middleton said. “I wouldn’t say we’re completely distraught or anything at the moment.
“We’re only four games in. We would like to string together a few in a row, obviously, but with it only being four games — the first four — fortunately there’s a lot of hockey left this year.”
Here's a video analysis of the loss from Dylan Loucks: