In St Paul, the Wild trailed the Columbus Blue Jackets, 2-0, in the third period.
That was before Kirill Kaprizov hit for a natural hat trick, including the game-winner in extra time for a 3-2 win for Minnesota.
“That guy does everything. It’s crazy,” the Wild’s Calen Addison said. “… He might be the hardest working superstar ever. I mean, this guy goes to the corners like no one else, and he’s not losing a battle ever. I mean, he does everything for us.”
Kaprizov scored twice in the third period tog et the tams even to force the extra session.
“To be honest, everyone’s working hard,” Kaprizov said. “Everyone’s trying and obviously I never want to be singled out. I work hard. So does the rest of the team. At the end of the day, we all come out, we play 60 minutes and do our best. I don’t like to be singled out. I don’t like to be compared, but I just go out there and do my job. Sometimes it goes in and sometimes I get a couple goals but ultimately I just kind of play my game.”
Marc-Andre Fleury made 22 saves in the Wild win.
“I wouldn’t say it’s one of the top games of my career,” Kaprizov said. “I’d say there’s been many games where you kind of have better chances or worst chances and sometimes they go in; sometimes they don’t. I wouldn’t say this is an above-and-beyond game.
Minnesota improved to 33-21-6 off a six-game point streak (5-0-1).
“They knew how they were playing the game,” Wild coach Dean Evason said. “Did we know we were going to get the result? No but again there was no panic. We didn’t know we were going to come back and win obviously but we had a good feeling about how we were playing the game. We were playing right and we were fortunate that we got rewarded.”
Columbus dropped to 19-35-6.
“We just ran out of gas,” Blue Jackets coach Brad Larsen said. “You could feel it in the third, they had some pressure, we had a couple turnovers which didn’t help.
“I thought the first half of the game we were real sharp. We needed more guys tonight to be on their game — we had a few guys who just weren’t locked in and it cost us tonight. You’re thrilled to build the lead because you need it, especially on the road, and you’re on a back-to-back here, so we just ran out of gas and got a little bit sloppy and it cost us.”
Columbus took a 1-0 lead in the first period on a marker from Mathieu Olivier.
Liam Foudy pushed the Blue Jackets lead to 2-0 early in the second period.
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Elvis Merzlikins made 41 saves in the Blue Jackets loss
“Obviously after one or two saves you build confidence and it just keeps going and going and you feel better,” Merzlikins said. “You feel that you are controlling the game, it’s not the game controlling you. That’s real important for a goaltender, I think. I was controlling the game.”
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