Wild wait too late in loss to Vegas

At some point, karma, odds, the hockey gods, or hubris come back to bite you in the breezers.

One of those vagaries of hockey came along Thursday night and taught the Minnesota Wild a lesson.

The Vegas Golden Knights took a 3-0 lead into the third period, and then had to hold a late charge from the Wild in a 3-2 win.

The Wild waited too long to get their game faces on.

“We didn’t have a great start, looked a little sluggish,” the Wild’ Marcus Foligno said. “Just didn’t get to our game early.”

Vegas’ Paul Cotter and Jonas Rondbjerg  scored in the win, for each, it was their first NHL strike.

“Being in Vegas is a treat,” Cotter said. “This arena is crazy. I think when you score that first one you kind of zone out and you’re in a daze a little bit. You still hear the roar of the crowd when you’re skating back to the bench. It’s a feeling you can’t describe.”

Vegas improved to 8-6-0.

Laurent Brossoit made 24 saves in the Vegas win.

“I thought our PK was really, really good,” Brossoit said. “They were moving it pretty well, but I thought our guys cut off seams really well.”

Jared Spurgeon and Ryan Hartman scored for Minnesota.

“We’ve been fortunate enough to have a lot of comebacks here,” Spurgeon said. “The belief was there. But if you have a 5-on-3 for that long and you don’t capitalize, that hurts the team.”

The Wild dropped to 9-4-0.

“I did ‘LB’ (Brossoit ) a little bit of a disservice,” Golden Knights head coach Peter DeBoer said. “He had that great first game for us in Dallas, and then he probably went another 10 days, two weeks before starting again in Detroit, and that wasn’t fair to him. I felt that I wanted to get him back in there after the Detroit game to get him a chance to get his legs under him.”

Jonathan Marchessault hit for a goal to give the Knights a 3-0 lead.

“When you get a call-up like this I think you need to take advantage of it, and I think those two guys did,” Marchessault said. “From the moment they showed up they’ve been playing good hockey everywhere on the ice. It’s fun for them to get rewarded.”

Minnesota was scoreless in six tries on the power-play.

“We take a ton of pride in [the penalty kill],” Vegas’ Brayden McNabb said. “It’s been off and on as of late, and we wanted to fix it. I thought we did a great job tonight. [Brossoit] played awesome.”

Cam Talbot made 32 saves in the Wild loss.