Wild vs. Stars Game 3: Dallas takes the series lead on Wyatt Johnston's OT winner

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Wyatt Johnston scored in double overtime at 12:54 a.m. on Thursday morning to give the Dallas Stars a 4-3 win and 2-1 series lead over the Minnesota Wild going into Saturday afternoon’s Game 4 between the Central Division heavyweights and Stanley Cup contenders. If Minnesota loses this series, it’ll be thinking about the five power plays it had in the third period and overtime in Game 3 all summer. After rallying from a 2-0 deficit on goals by Marcus Johansson, Joel Eriksson Ek and Michael McCarron, the Wild had two chances to turn a 3-2 lead into a 4-2 lead on early-third-period power plays, only to fail miserably. They then had three power plays to break a 3-3 tie — two in overtime — after Matt Duchene scored a power-play goal to tie it after he’d, on the same shift, denied Matt Boldy a shorthanded goal with a hustling backcheck and stickcheck. The Wild drew two power plays in the first overtime, one that carried into the second, and the closest they came to scoring was Kirill Kaprizov hitting the post. So you just knew what was going to happen when Dallas earned a second consecutive power play when dead-tired rookie Danila Yurov airmailed a puck high into the stands in double overtime. On the ensuing power play, Johnston scored his second career overtime winner by extending his stick and redirecting Miro Heiskanen’s shot past Jesper Wallstedt to send what had been a loud, anxious crowd standing throughout both overtimes home disenchanted. When a best-of-seven series is tied 1-1, the winner of Game 3 holds an all-time series record of 245-124 (.664). “Whether we were 4-for-4 on the power play tonight or 0-for-whatever we were, that doesn’t change how we have to approach the next game,” said Quinn Hughes. “We’re gonna need it again. And obviously felt like we had our looks to be the difference and just didn’t come.” As far as Wild playoff clunkers go, this looked like it was going to be classic from the outset. The game ops brought the electricity during one heck of a hype-up pregame that had the crowd buzzing. Minnesota Vikings star Justin Jefferson brought it during one electric pregame “Let’s Play Hockey” that had the crowd erupting. But in just 85 seconds, the Stars silenced the crowd with a Mikko Rantanen power-play goal after one of the Wild’s most gentlemanly, least penalized players ever, Jonas Brodin, was whistled for tripping 65 seconds in. By the 13:48 mark, it was 2-0 Dallas as that once exhilarated crowd grew even more tense with Boldy in the trainer’s room after being plunked on the back of the head by Stars captain Jamie Benn’s stick. After Johansson cut the deficit in half late in the first, Boldy reemerged in the second and put forth a highlight-reel shift to help the Wild tie the game five minutes into the period. He weaved through the neutral zone, split three Stars defenders between the circles and laid the puck on a tee for a Joel Eriksson Ek goal into a gaping net. But after Michael McCarron gave the Wild a 3-2 lead seconds after they had killed consecutive minors, including a five-on-three, they had two golden opportunities to extend their lead to on power plays, and the Stars’ penalty kill extinguished both. Johnston’s goal came in 30 minutes, 12 seconds of ice time — most amongst Stars forwards. Quinn Hughes logged 43:47, while Miro Heiskanen logged 43:05. When Boldy’s clearing attempt during a Wild penalty kill soared over the neutral zone, over the offensive zone, over Jake Oettinger and over the glass from 180 feet away, it looked like it would spell disaster for the Wild. Instead, it turned into a nightmare for Dallas. Boldy’s delay-of-game penalty late in the second period — with Ryan Hartman already in the box for cross-checking Radek Faksa — gave the Stars 41 seconds of a five-on-three power play. The Wild penalty kill stood firm, though, with Jake Middleton winning a puck battle with Duchene in the corner to get a critical clear. Then, just as the clock ticked down on Boldy’s penalty, Jared Spurgeon beat Dallas’ Mavrik Bourque to a puck behind the net and nudged it to Brodin, who found Nick Foligno for the outlet pass, while McCarron trucked his way up the middle of the ice. Foligno found him in stride at center ice, and McCarron sniped a shot through a Thomas Harley screen — blocker side on Oettinger, the fourth such Minnesota goal in the last two games — to give Minnesota a 3-2 lead and send the home crowd into a tizzy. Boldy’s penalty was Minnesota’s sixth of the first two periods, but it was the exception, as most of the others were the result of the Wild getting overly physical. The Stars weren’t shy about making contact, either — witness Benn’s hit on Boldy or Johnston’s spearing of Kaprizov in the nether region late in the second — but Minnesota took the brunt of the officiating. The Wild skirted the line between physical and foolish in Games 2 and 3, and Stars coach Glen Gulutzan was asked before Game 3 if his team was hoping to goad the Wild into such penalties. “No, I think that’s natural stuff within the emotion of a series,” Gulutzan said. “You can look at other series around the league, a lot of emotion in those. No, it’s just both teams playing really hard, that’s all I see it as. It’s playoff hockey, we do it every year and we try to break it down into something else, but it’s not. It’s just the same way every year. It’s the time of year you do have to stay disciplined.” The Stars know well how raucous Grand Casino Arena can get, and were just hoping to weather the storm early on. They did one better, with Rantanen scoring a power-play goal just 85 seconds into the game to quiet the home crowd almost immediately. “It’s always (like that on) home ice, everybody’s really excited to play in front of their fans,” Rantanen said before the game. “They’re going to be really humming at the start, so we’ve got to match the intensity, the physicality. … It’s about executing under pressure.” Dallas did. Minnesota didn’t. An uncharacteristic offensive-zone tripping penalty by Brodin — essentially shoving Sam Steel to the ice along the boards — put the Wild shorthanded, and the Stars didn’t waste any time. Jason Robertson caught Brock Faber flat-footed as he streaked down the left wing, and Rantanen blew past Boldy on the other side. Robertson hit the net-crashing Rantanen with a perfect pass, and the big Finn chipped it past Wallstedt for the early lead. Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms