The Wild, in Dallas without Kirill Kaprizov, come suddenly to life

DALLAS – Falling behind a pesky opponent on their home ice in what’s been a lopsided rivalry after flying in just hours before puck drop while their best player stayed back in Minnesota hurt isn’t how the Wild’s woes against the Stars continued.

This is how the Wild finally turned the tables on Dallas.

Despite all that was working against them, particularly Kirill Kaprizov’s absence because of a lower-body injury, the Wild rallied 3-2 in overtime Friday at American Airlines Center for one of their more unlikely victories of the season. It stopped a four-game skid against their Central Division neighbor that was a seven-game rut when factoring in their first-round playoff series from two seasons ago.

“A great win,” Marcus Foligno said. “Great character win.”

Brock Faber scored off a wraparound just 35 seconds into 3-on-3 overtime for his first career OT goal and second game-winner, a comeback that started to form late in the second period.

Trailing 2-0 after Evgenii Dadonov split Faber and Jonas Brodin for a breakaway at 9:52 of the first period and Wyatt Johnston capitalized from the slot with 4:52 left in the second, the Wild began to pressure Dallas more seriously in the final minute of the period and were almost rewarded: Yakov Trenin narrowly missed burying the puck into an open net while Lakeville’s Jake Oettinger was across the crease, instead sending a shot into the side netting; seconds later, a Foligno deflection hit the post.

“That was more the recipe we needed to play with in the third,” coach John Hynes said.

Just past the midway point, at 10:36, their aggressiveness paid off, with Mats Zuccarello flinging a cross-zone pass to Brodin that Brodin slid by Oettinger after Zuccarello received a two-handed shove up ice by Faber.

“I was going to try to come around the outside,” Faber explained. “[Zuccarello] started skating up the wall, so I kind of clipped him to start. So, I was like I gotta speed him back up.”

“He sees an old man needs a little help,” Zuccarello said. “So, it was good.”

Only 57 seconds later, Foligno redirected in a shot from captain Jared Spurgeon to send both teams back to square one — what looked like a pipedream based on how the Wild started, the momentum they might have built from a 4-3 win over the Blackhawks on Monday that ended their season-long, four-game losing streak appearing to get lost over their holiday layoff.

They returned without Kaprizov after he went into the break sore and banged up, Hynes said.

Kaprizov, whose 23 goals are tied for second in the NHL and 50 points are tied for fourth, is considered day to day. He missed one other game last month after a knee-on-knee hit from the Oilers’ Drake Caggiula, but Kaprizov’s current issue isn’t related to that previous injury.

The Wild were also without Joel Eriksson Ek, Jakub Lauko and Jake Middleton, with Eriksson Ek (lower body) skating Friday in Minnesota and Lauko (lower body) and Middleton (upper body) progressing.

For the past six weeks, the Wild have been tested by injuries, and although the buffer they established in the standings with their early-season soar has deteriorated some, they’ve remained mostly competitive.

But they didn’t show that moxie early against the Stars.

The Wild botched their first and only power play, with Dallas playing keep-away in the Wild’s zone; once the Wild regained possession, they iced the puck.

“Early morning, 5:30 wakeup,” said Brodin, referring to the Wild flying into Dallas on Friday morning after the NHL’s three-day shutdown. “It’s been a long day, but I think everyone just sticked to it. We didn’t have a great start.”

Still, the Wild were behind only by a pair of goals when they did start their turnaround thanks to goalie Filip Gustavsson (27 saves) and a 3-for-3 showing by the penalty kill. Oettinger made 15 stops, the Wild’s 18 shots tying their season low.

“It’s just two shots, right?” Faber said. “That’s all it is.”

Faber tallied the third-fastest OT goal by a Wild defenseman, and the Wild picked up their first multigoal, third-period comeback win on the road since Nov. 6, 2021, when they prevailed 5-4 in a shootout at Pittsburgh.

But for this version of the Wild, to persevere despite challenging circumstances against a rival that’s had the upper hand lately made the outcome that much more meaningful.

“It shows when we play to our system, when we play the game we want to play, we can beat everyone,” Faber said. “We’re confident in that, and it’s trying to find that consistently and playing that game more often than not.”