LOS ANGELES – Adrian Kempe and Brandt Clarke scored in a shootout as the Los Angeles Kings overcame a quartet of rallies by the Minnesota Wild to win 5-4 on Saturday night at Crypto.com Arena.
The Wild answered four times when the Kings took the lead, forcing 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.
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.
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 Mats 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 Kings killed one penalty and part of another in the middle frame as the Wild made an offensive push, which included an unsuccessful Kirill 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 Quinn 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 Fiala’s cross-ice pass got Wallstedt moving laterally just enough to open a gap between his knees, and 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.
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.
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