Kirill Kaprizov nets game winner as Wild beat Senators in OT

Nov. 3—Kirill Kaprizov owes Nico Sturm a nice dinner at Manny's Steakhouse. Maybe an expensive bottle of wine. Why not both?

It's the least the 24-year-old star can do for the teammate that helped him bust out of his slump.

With the scored tied in overtime on Tuesday night at Xcel Energy Center, coach Dean Evason called for Sturm and Kaprizov as the next players to go over the boards. He likely would've preferred it to be in that exact order considering Kaprizov had already taken a shift in the extra session and Sturm was fresh.

On the bench, though, Sturm had already talked to Kaprizov about when to jump.

"You kind of figure out yourselves who's taking who on the ice," Sturm said. "I just told him to take the first guy coming back because I knew he had a goal in him tonight."

Sure enough, Freddy Gaudreau came to the bench for a change, Kaprizov raced onto the ice, and roughly 10 seconds later, he scored his first goal of the season to lift the Wild to a dramatic 5-4 win over the Ottawa Senators.

After the game Evason admitted, "It was Sturmy that was supposed to go." He also praised Gaudreau for being unselfish enough to come off the ice. That gave Kaprizov a chance to play hero.

Fittingly, the game-winner reads Kaprizov from Kevin Fiala in the final box score.

For the past week and a half, the narrative surrounding Kaprizov and Fiala was that the Wild needed more from their budding stars. They were simultaneously struggling through massive scoring slumps, and more concerning, were getting a little too cute in search of offense.

That wasn't the case on this particular night as Kaprizov and Fiala worked their butts off all game and were rewarded for it.

"They have a lot of pressure because they're counted on to do it every night," Marcus Foligno said. "Just have to go back to the basics when we're in the ruts and things like that. We always talk about that stuff. They were unbelievable tonight."

After back-to-back losses over the weekend, the Wild understood the assignment heading into the game.

With the Senators playing the second half of a back-to-back — after getting crushed by the then-winless Blackhawks roughly 24 hours earlier — there was a prime opportunity to gain the upper hand with a fast start.

That's exactly what the Wild got with a goal from Foligno early in the first period to make it 1-0, followed by the first goal of Calen Addison's career to stretch the lead to 2-0.

Still, with a chance to put the game away for good, the Wild couldn't net the separation goal. Instead, the Senators slowly chipped away, starting with a goal from center Nick Paul to cut the deficit to 2-1.

Though the Wild managed to make it 3-1 later in the first period with a goal from Sturm, the Senators responded with a couple of solid shifts to keep their spirits up.

Then the floodgates opened for the Senators in the second period, starting with a snipe from winger Drake Batherson to make it 3-2. To make matters worse for the Wild, they ended up on the penalty kill immediately following the goal after coach Dean Evason was unsuccessful with his coach's challenge.

On the ensuing power play, the Senators tied the game at 3-3 when winger Brady Tkachuk slid the puck into the back of the net. Not long after that, center Chris Tierney fortuitously had a puck bounce off his shoulder to push the Senators in front 4-3.

"They gained some momentum from that a little bit," Evason said of the failed coach's challenge. "It kind of jumped them. But what we stressed in between first period and second period is that what we've seen on tape and obviously what they've showed us here tonight is they're not going to quit. We knew that they were just going to keep coming."

Luckily for the Wild, they finally punched back midway through the second period when Foligno buried a perfect feed from Matt Dumba to level the score at 4-4.

"Just came to the realization that we're beating ourselves," Foligno said before unleashing a laundry list of things the Wild were doing wrong. "We just need to understand that we need to be nasty. We need to be aggressive and desperate."

That launched the Wild into the third period where they dominated play, peppering goaltender Filip Gustavsson with 20 shots on goal to no avail.

That set the stage for overtime where Kaprizov played hero with help from Fiala.

After the Kaprizov told assistant coaches Bob Woods and Brett McLean that it felt like the first goal he'd ever scored. The scoring slump was clearly weight on him.

"I mean, he's a a goal scorer, and I'm sure he was frustrated," Sturm said. "And that's OK. I'm sure Kev was the same way. They are the type of players that want to score goals. But I give those guys a lot of credit. Even though they hadn't scored as much as they wanted it to, the last couple games, they played a team game."

And the finally got rewarded for it.