ST. PAUL — It wasn’t the way the Wild would have drawn it up, but they’ll take it.
What appeared early to be a runaway victory over a second-division club playing out the string became a fight dogfight that the Wild were fortunate to send into overtime. That one point officially clinched Minnesota’s 2022 postseason berth, but the Wild needed another to stay within spitting distance of St. Louis for home ice in the first round of the playoffs.
Kevin Fiala tied the game 4-4 when Jordie Benn’s one-timer hit him at the crease and deflected past Sharks goaltender James Reimer with 11 minutes remaining in regulation, then scored the overtime winner on a wrist shot from between the circles as the Wild rallied for a 5-4 victory and two important points in front of 19,029 at Xcel Energy Center.
The sellout was the Wild’s 700th in franchise history.
After taking a 2-0 lead on San Jose in the game’s first 7 minutes, 29 seconds, the Wild started getting careless with the puck, and goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury struggled to find it. But as the Wild have done so often this season, they rallied late.
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Dimitry Kulikov, Jared Spurgeon, and Matt Boldy also scored for the Wild, who trail the Blues by a point in their race for home ice with a game in hand.
Matt Nieto scored twice for San Jose, one of four Sharks players with two points. Former Wild star Brent Burns had two assists, and Rudolfs Balcers and Noah Gregor each had a goal and assists.
The Wild took a quick 2-0 lead on two shots from beyond the right circle, the first Kulikov’s one-time slap shot off a short feed from Fiala that split traffic and slipped past Kahkonen, screened by center Connor Dewar and his own defenseman Nicolas Meloche, at 6:04 of the first period.
Just more than a minute later, Spurgeon one-timed a pass from Marcus Foligno while standing on the blue line. That found the far corner of the net over Reimer’s stick for a 2-0 lead at 7:29.
The Sharks, however, came right back on a goal from Balcers, who wristed a shot on goal from high between the circles and found the 5 hole of Fleury, who looked late on his save attempt. That made it 2-1 at 9:38.
San Jose tied it 2-2 early in the second period after a turnover on a no-look, backward pass from the Wild to the blue line. That set up a breakaway for Nieto, who flew in via the right circle and fired it past Fleury into the far corner at 1:19.
Boldy wristed a juicy rebound into the high near corner from between the circle for a 3-2 Wild lead at 6:37 of the second period, but the Sharks tied it again when Burns threw a shot on net from the point and Gregor one-time the rebound into an open net at 11:11.
Nieto scored shorthanded to give the Sharks a 4-3 lead in the third period, and Fiala tied it 4-4 with his deflection goal with 11 minutes left.
