Before the Wild’s game against the Columbus Blue Jackets on Saturday night, coach Dean Evason mentioned that he and his staff weren’t crazy about the team’s starts in the season’s first four games.
They couldn’t have been happy with Saturday’s start, either.
After essentially chasing the puck for half an hour, the Wild woke up and started taking the initiative and erasing two-goal and one-goal deficits to force overtime. Still, it wasn’t enough.
Jack Roslovic skated between three Wild players to score the winner, with less than two minutes left in overtime to lift the Blue Jackets to a 5-4 victory and drop the Wild to 2-3-0 this season.
Marcus Johansson tied the game, 4-4, late in the third period, and Filip Gustavsson, under siege all night, extended the game into OT and finished with 49 saves.
Mats Zuccarello scored his first goal of the season — and had another erased by an offsides challenge — and defensemen Jonas Brodin and Daktoa Mermis also scored for the Wild, who improved to 3-2-0 this season.
Columbus rookie Adam Fantilli gave the Blue Jackets a 4-3 lead with a wrist shot from the circle with 5:59 remaining, but Johansson ended a long forecheck with a shot through traffic to tie the game at 17:01.
Brodin, camped in the slot on a forecheck, scored the go-ahead goal, bounding a puck off the right arm of Elvis Merzlikins after taking a soft pass from Joel Eriksson Ek 4 minutes and 42 seconds into the third period.
Boone Jenner tied the game 3-3 when he found a rebound in the slot and swiped it into an almost empty net at 7:36 of the third period, but Pat Maroon skated a puck into the crease and drew a tripping penalty and the Wild appeared to retake the lead on the ensuing power play.
Zuccarello slipped a wrist shot through traffic that beat Merzlikins high far corner, but Columbus challenged offsides and won. The NHL determined Johansson had preceded the puck into the zone on his entry. It was the third time a Wild goal has been challenged this season, and the second time one was taken away.
For the most part, Columbus dictated play for all of the first period and the early part of the second. The Wild mounted few chances and struggled to get its cycle going, instead chasing the Blue Jackets early.
With the Wild scrambling in their own zone, the Blue Jackets took a 1-0 lead when Justin Danforth gathered his own rebound and poked it into the corner past Filip Gustavsson at 14:06 of the first period.
Columbus broke up a lackluster start to the second period when Kent Johnson took a pass from Cole Sillinger above the right circle and snapped off a shot that found the far side of the net at 6:10 for a 2-0 lead.
That seemed to wake up the somnambulating Wild.
A minute later, the Wild were cycling in the Columbus zone when Mermis sent a wrist shot through traffic and it beat a screened Elvis Merzlikins to cut the Blue Jackets’ lead to 2-1 at 7:21.
Less than a minute later, Wild center Ryan Hartman won a battle on the boards and fired a quick pass to Zuccarello in the high slot. The winger fired a slap shot that found the far side of the net to tie the game 2-2 at 8:15. It was his first goal of the season after piling up six assists in four games.
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