Entertaining game and finish down at the Joe tonight.
For the second time in five games, the Wild pulled its goalie, scored to force overtime and snagged that precious second point to get out of dodge with a big road win.
On Oct. 20, it was in Edmonton when Dany Heatley scored with 1.2 tics left with Niklas Backstrom on the bench. The Wild then won it in a shootout on Matt Cullen's third shootout goal of the season.
Tonight, with Josh Harding on the bench, Mikko Koivu snapped a 19-game goal drought with a minute left on a deflection of Justin Falk's shot to force OT. Then in OT, after Harding got the benefit of a pretty generous goalie interference call after Johan Franzen fell on top of him while he was way out of his crease, Devin Setoguchi scored 1:33 into overtime after pure determination from Koivu.
In the right circle, Koivu took a shot that was blocked. The puck went to the corner, Koivu got there first, fought off big Nik Kronwall with a shoudler to the face that knocked him down. THEN, as if that wasn't enough, Koivu skated alone through the right circle, into the slot and passed against the grain to Setoguchi, who popped in his own rebound.
You've got to love the irony of the Wild going 0 for 7 on the power play, but then ironically tying the game on a 6-on-5, then winning it on a 4-on-3. Power play went 1 for 8, and it will be the 1 it cares about.
Quite the finish in a game the Wild had to face an early furious storm from a ticked-off Red Wings squad that was attempting to open a six-game homestand by snapping a four-game losing streak.
The Wild's starting five – Cal Clutterbuck-Kyle Brodziak-Nick Johnson-Nick Schultz-Marek Zidlicky – got pinned in its zone for the first 1:45 of the game. Detroit took the game's first eight shots and took a 1-0 lead on Nick Lidstrom's goal.