The Minnesota Wild erased a three-goal deficit, but couldn't manage to force overtime in their 4-3 road loss to the Pittsburgh Penguins inside PPG Paints Arena on Monday night, which ended their three-game winning streak.
The Wild were already shorthanded without their two defensive leaders in Jared Spurgeon and Jonas Brodin heading into the road matchup.
To make matters worse, the Wild's leading point getter, Mats Zuccarello, couldn't play Monday, either, due to an upper-body injury, which forced Vinni Lettieri into the lineup.
Under John Hynes, prior to Monday's game, the Wild were 7-0 when scoring first and 0-2 when allowing the first goal. That continued Monday night in Pittsburgh despite the Wild's convincing rally in the second and third periods.
Reilly Smith gave the Penguins a 1-0 lead 7:39 into the contest when he beat red-hot Filip Gustavsson (26 saves on 30 shots) high glove on a forehand backhand move in tight after Valtteri Puustinen forced Alex Goligoski to turn the puck over behind the Wild's net.
The Penguins, who were coming off a humbling 7-0 loss in Toronto, doubled their lead when Jake Guentzel tipped Erik Karlsson's shot from above the left circle past Gustavsson on the power play 36 seconds into the middle frame.
Evgeni Malkin gave the Penguins a 3-0 lead two minutes and 58 seconds later on a 2-on-1 odd man rush. It sure looked like that sealed the deal, but the Wild responded as good as they could've with three goals of their own to tie the game.
Brock Faber, who continues to impress, entered the offensive zone with ease and threw the puck on net from along the boards. The puck didn't get to Alex Nedeljkovic's (24 saves on 27 shots), though, as it took a fortuitous bounce off John Ludvig's skate in front and out to Ryan Hartman, who buried the puck past Nedeljkovic short side from the bottom of the right circle for his eighth goal.
Hartman was in Zuccarello's spot on the second line alongside Marcus Johansson and Marco Rossi on Monday night.
Then, two minutes and 24 seconds after Hartman got the Wild on the board, Jake Middleton scored his career-high fifth goal of the season with 2:30 left in the middle frame, which was assisted by Matt Boldy and Kirill Kaprizov.
Lettieri tied the game with 14:27 left on the clock when he tipped Jon Merrill's long-range shot. But Kaprizov took the team's fifth penalty 12 seconds after Lettieri's game-tying goal, and the Penguins made the Wild pay for their second straight five-penalty game.
None other than Sidney Crosby scored what would be the eventual game-winning power play goal with 13:40 left — 47 seconds after Lettieri's goal.
The Wild, who went 0-for-3 on the power play, allowed two power play goals in the loss as penalties proved to be their achilles heel Monday in what was an even game at five-on-five.
There's no question that the Wild deserve credit for not only coming back, but playing well without three of their most important players. But, in the end, it was the Penguins' stars who came through Monday. Kaprizov, who has eight goals, has scored only three times at five-on-five this season, which is not good enough plain and simple.
The Wild finish up their quick road trip against the Boston Bruins Tuesday ahead of hosting the Montreal Canadiens on Thursday and Bruins on Saturday.