LOS ANGELES (AP) — The Minnesota Wild won only two games last season when trailing after two periods. They have already equaled that total during the first week of the season.
Marcus Johansson scored with 11 seconds remaining in overtime Saturday night as the Wild rallied for a 4-3 victory over the Los Angeles Kings for the second straight game after trailing by two goals after two periods.
“You don’t want to continually do this, clearly, but two games in and if you have that good feeling and good belief hopefully it translates earlier more nights,” Wild coach Dean Evason said.
Johansson took the pass from Kirill Kaprizov and one-timed a wrist shot past Kings goaltender Jonathan Quick on his stick side to complete the comeback and give Minnesota its first 2-0 start since 2015-16.
It is also the first time since October 2014 that the Wild have overcome multi-goal deficits in the third period in consecutive games.
“I didn’t get a lot of it, but it turned out to be a nice little chip shot and I’ll take that any day,” Johansson said.
Ryan Suter sent it to overtime with 2 seconds remaining with a snap shot near the blue line that Quick was unable to get his glove on.
Matt Roy could have put the Kings up by two goals with 36 seconds remaining, but his shot hit the right post on an empty-net situation.
Matt Dumba and Joel Eriksson Ek also tallied goals for Minnesota, and Jordan Greenway had a pair of assists. Cam Talbot made 30 saves for the Wild.
Gabriel Vilardi, Blake Lizotte and Alex Athanasiou scored for Los Angeles while Jeff Carter had two assists. Quick stopped 40 shots.
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