Wild blow three leads in shootout loss to Kraken

An overtime point can be a moral victory for a team that rallies late. That wasn’t the case for the Wild on Saturday.

Minnesota surrendered leads of 2-0, 3-2 and 4-3 before dropping the season’s second game, 5-4, to the Seattle Kraken on Saturday at Xcel Energy Center.

Jordan Eberle scored twice in regulation, then scored the winning goal in the shootout as the Kraken rallied from three regulation deficits to force overtime and earn the extra point in the shootout.

After a scoreless three-on-three overtime period, Joe Daccord stopped one of the Wild’s two shootout attempts.

Mats Zuccarello, Matt Boldy, Kirill Kaprizov and Ryan Hartman scored for the Wild, but Eberle scored twice for the Kraken to erase a 2-0 deficit, setting the tone for a game in which Seattle never led in regulation.

Marc-Andre Fleury, making his first start of his 21st and final NHL season, stopped 30 of 34 shots in regulation. Daccord stopped 33 of 37 for Seattle, which improved to 1-1.

Tye Kartye scored to tie the game 3-3 early in the third period, and after Hartman gave the Wild a 4-3 lead with 7:32 remaining, Jared McCann beat Fleury high glove side with a one-timer with 3:26 left in regulation.

Minnesota (1-0-1) now starts a seven-game road trip that starts Sunday evening in Winnipeg against the 2-0 Jets and takes them through the rest of the month with stops in four states.

The Wild played more than half of the game without second-line center Joel Eriksson Ek, who was injured when he took an elbow to the face from Seattle defenseman Adam Larsson while forechecking early in the second period.

Bloodied by the hit — which did not draw a penalty — Eriksson Ek went to the trainer’s room and returned for the start of the third period. He played one shift before leaving again.

The Wild’s top line scored its first goal of the young season when Zuccarello took a feed from Kaprizov and one-timed it past Daccord for a 1-0 lead at 9:22 of the first period.

The goal was Zuccarello’s 200th goal in 836 career NHL games and followed a strong shift from the third line of Marcus Foligno, Hartman and Yakov Trenin, which gave the Wild a rare forecheck that ended in Seattle’s end. Coach John Hynes put the first line out after the stoppage.

Minnesota finished the first period on a power play after Jaden Schwartz was called for tripping Kaprizov with 14 seconds left. Kaprizov scored off a rebound, but the clock was at 0.00 when the puck crossed the goal line.

The same man advantage bore fruit in the second period, however, when Boldy skated a puck between the circles and fired a snapshot that caromed past Daccord for a 2-0 lead.

But play quickly tilted the Kraken’s way when Eberle scored the first of his two goals just 40 seconds later to pull Seattle back within 2-1 at 1:46.

The Kraken tied the game on a power play after a strange tripping penalty was called on Jonas Brodin, who was tripped by Brandon Tanev but was called for tripping Tanev, who lost his footing and had to dodge one of Brodin’s skate blades.

On the ensuing power play, Eberle set up camp at the corner of the crease and scored when a pass by Jared McCann deflected off his skate behind Fleury to tie the game 2-2 at 8:15.

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