LOS ANGELES – One byproduct of the great hockey the Minnesota Wild played in November and December, and the addition of Quinn Hughes to the mix, has been a feeling that they are never finished. even when trailing — which has been rare — they feel that the game is still theirs for the taking.

On Saturday night at Crypto.com Arena, the Wild trailed four times in regulation, but found a way to rally each time. They fell 5-4 in a shootout when Adrian Kempe and Brandt Clarke scored for the Los Angeles Kings, but found a way to get a point, and felt they deserved to win a game in which they never held a lead.

Minnesota forced overtime on goals by Jake Middleton, Joel Eriksson Ek, Brock Faber and Matt Boldy, but they fell to 3-0-2 on their current road trip. Jesper Wallstedt, making his 17th start of the season, had 34 saves in the loss.

“I thought that was really good by our guys, I think sticking with it, coming in and being down and continuing to fight back, even late in the game,” Wild coach John Hynes said.

Faber was whistled for high sticking late in the overtime, forcing the Wild to kill 92 seconds of 4-on-3 man advantage in the extra session. Los Angeles out-shot Minnesota 6-3 in overtime. The Wild got a Boldy goal in the shootout, but Kirill Kaprizov, Mats Zuccarello and Vladimir Tarasenko were stopped.

Having played the night before, a 5-2 win in Anaheim, and facing a desperate Kings team, the Wild knew that a storm was coming.

“They’re one of the fastest teams the way they play in the whole league,” Faber said. “Obviously off a quick turnaround, back-to-back, less than 23 hours, that’s a hard team to play in their building. I thought we responded pretty well.”

In a recent rarity, the Wild found themselves playing from behind early in the opening period, when Kempe was uncovered at the right of the Minnesota net, and slapped home a pass that Anze Kopitar sent from below the goal line.

The deficit was short-lived as Middleton snapped a shot past the Kings netminder after a setup pass from Zuccarello. It was Middleton’s birthday week present to himself, after he had turned 30 a day earlier.

The other factor in the first was Wallstedt and the help he got from his defenders, as Los Angeles buzzed in the offensive zone for much of the period.

The rookie goalie was his own harshest critic after the game, and credited his defense for keeping it close.

“I don’t think I personally gave the team a good chance to take two points,” Wallstedt said, as he fell to 11-2-4 this season. “They luckily kept me in the game the whole time. I felt like they gave us a good chance to win. Overall the game felt disappointing.”

The Kings killed one penalty and part of another in the middle frame as the Wild made an offensive push, which included an unsuccessful Kaprizov breakaway with seven minutes to play in the period. Wallstedt stopped a breakaway with just under five minutes left in the period, but the Kings got a power play in the process and scored on the man advantage to re-take the lead.

The Wild tied it up again just 90 seconds later when Eriksson Ek caught a long lead pass from Hughes and put a low shot past Darcy Kuemper on the power play.

Los Angeles took the lead for a third time early in the third on a broken play where the initial shot went wide of the net, but the puck caromed off the end boards and into the Minnesota crease. With both teams scrambling to do something with the loose puck, it ended up over the goal line, forcing the visitors to play from behind again.

And again, the Wild answered, with Faber capping a pretty tic-tac-toe passing play with Kaprizov and Danila Yurov.

But Kevin Fiala’s cross-ice pass got Wallstedt moving laterally just enough to open a gap between his knees, and Sammy Helenius hit that spot for his first goal of the season. And it was still not enough, as a puck shot by Faber went off Boldy with 2:57 left in regulation, knotting things at 4-4.

After Marcus Foligno got his first goal of the season on New Year’s Eve in San Jose, Middleton joked that it was his turn, having not scored since March 15 of last year.

“I normally have a few goals before I take 35 games off from scoring. So this one was getting a little stressful, but I got it out of the way,” Middleton joked, noting that the pressure was on after Foligno scored. “We were battling for last there. I won.”

Kuemper, who began his career in Minnesota, had 24 saves for the Kings.

The Wild will stay in Los Angeles for game six of their seven-game road trip, facing the Kings again on Monday night, with the first faceoff at 9:30 p.m. CT.

Related Articles

Danila Yurov signals his Wild ‘adaptation’ is over

Quinn Hughes puts on a show as Wild dump Ducks

Jesper Wallstedt a pleasant surprise addition to Team Sweden

Eight from the Wild headed to the Olympics

Three Wild players chosen for U.S. Olympic hockey team