Cruising with a 3-0 lead late in the first period, the Wild appeared to put the Los Angeles Kings away early when Ryan Hartman swept in a rebound with 3 minutes, 7 seconds left for a 4-0 lead.

The horn sounded, and Hartman raised his arms. But before the Wild center could get to bench for his high-fives, on-ice officials waved off the goal on goaltender interference. Hartman was engaged with Quinton Byfield and fell into Darcy Kuemper, impeding the goaltender’s ability to chase the puck.

The contact was incidental, but that disallowed goal loomed large as the Kings rallied to tie the game with three third-period goals to send the game to overtime.

But Jesper Wallstedt, making his first NHL start since Dec. 21, 2024, stopped all four of the Kings’ shootout shots, and the Wild survived long enough to win it, 4-3, on Marco Rossi’s shootout goal. Wallstedt stopped Andrei Kuzmenko to seal the victory.

It looked like the Wild’s game early. In the space of 2 minutes 29 seconds, Jared Spurgeon, Kirill Kaprizov and Matt Boldy scored power-play goals as Minnesota raced to a 3-0 lead.

Kaprizov and Boldy each scored their third goal in three games, and goaltender Jesper Wallstedt made 31 saves in his first NHL game since Dec. 21, 2024. But the Wild haven’t scored an even-strength goal since their 5-0, season-opening win at St. Louis on Oct. 10 and appeared to run out of gas as the Kings pinned them in their own end for most of the third period.

Kevin Fiala and Quinton Byfield each scored early in the third period, the latter on a power-play goal, as the Kings made it a one-goal game late. With Kuemper pulled for an extra attacker, Adrian Kempe scored on a long rebound with 45 seconds left in regulation to tie it 3-3.

The Wild put a franchise-best 52 shots on goal against the Blue Jackets on Saturday but had only two shots on goal until they set up camp in the Kings’ zone late in the first period, helped immensely by three minor penalties on Los Angeles in less than three minutes.

Spurgeon and Kaprizov scored on wrist shots through traffic, Kaprizov’s on a 5-on-3 advantage after Adrian Kempe hooked him near the beginning of another man advantage that made it 2-0 at 16:13.

Twenty seconds later, Boldy threw a puck at Kings goaltender Kuemper from behind the net. It caromed off Keumper’s left leg and over the goal line for a 3-0 lead.

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A 22-year-old man who officials say posed as a teen to enroll and attend classes last month at White Bear Lake Area High School is accused of “apparent predatory behavior” involving girls as young as 14 and sending a sexually explicit video “likely involving a minor” to girls in Farmington and Mahtomedi, according to a police search warrant affidavit.

The new allegations surfaced in an Oct. 3 affidavit that was written by a White Bear Lake police investigator while requesting copies of the man’s Liberian birth certificate and documents he used to enroll at the high school.

The court filing, which was unsealed Monday in Ramsey County District Court, says the man admitted to the investigator during an interview that he got through the enrollment process by using a Liberian birth certificate, and that he also has a Minnesota birth certificate.

The school district has said the man was enrolled Sept. 3-29 as an 18 year old, and that he participated in three practices with the high school’s football team.

The Pioneer Press is not naming the man because he has not been charged with any crimes relating to his time as a high school student.

White Bear Lake Police Chief Dale Hager said Monday a case against the man could be sent this week to the Ramsey County Attorney’s Office for possible charges. Hager previously said the man is under investigation for fraud, forgery and unlawful conduct involving interaction with minors.

The man was arrested Sept. 29 in Plymouth on warrants for alleged probation violations stemming from a 2024 theft conviction in Anoka County and a 2023 conviction in Washington County for sending a 15-year-old girl a nude picture of himself through Snapchat. The Hennepin County jail booking sheet listed his place of residence as Lino Lakes.

The man pleaded guilty to the Washington County probation violation on Oct. 2, according to court records, which do not disclose what the violation entailed. A judge ordered him to complete three days of work service, and he was released from custody the same day.

A search warrant affidavit filed in Washington County on Oct. 1 described allegations that he had received nude photos from one girl, and that several parents reported “possible sexual assaults.”

‘Tried to befriend girls’

According to the latest affidavit, the man’s ruse was reported to police Sept. 29 after parents, students and staff were “alarmed (the man) was in the school on false pretenses masquerading as a student.” An initial investigation showed he was 22 and enrolled using fraudulent documentation and a false name.

Over the next week, the police investigator spoke to “numerous teen girls who had contact with (the man)” — mostly through Snapchat, where he “tried to befriend girls as young as 14,” the affidavit said. In most of the high school cases, the girls rebuffed his advances and requests to hang out, get rides home or go to their houses, and they blocked him on social media, after “feeling badgered or coerced.”

His “true identity” was revealed when he was named in public jail records following his Sept. 29 arrest, the affidavit said, and the “girls believed his advances were sexually motivated.”

One girl, who had attended the high school’s homecoming dance with the man, warned others about him.

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Investigations into possible sexual contact with girls under age 16 are ongoing with law enforcement agencies “as far south as Farmington, and all the way” to Sherburne County, the affidavit said. His alleged “behavior involves ‘friending’ as many teens as he can, and then targeting girls he’s interested in via social media, some as young as 14.”

Authorities were trying to reveal the identity of the girl seen in the sexually explicit video the man allegedly shared to girls Farmington and Mahtomedi, the affidavit said.

The Forest Lake school district previously said the man was a student at Forest Lake Area High School from January 2022 to early January 2023 and that he played football for some of the 2022 season.

He attended Centennial Area Learning Center from early September 2023 to mid-December of that year, according to the Centennial School District. He then participated until late May 2024 in the district’s online program designed for students who need to make up credit toward their diploma, but did not graduate from the district.

Meanwhile, a St. Paul police spokeswoman said Monday that no arrests have been made in the assault of the man, which happened sometime between Oct. 3-4. Police said the man, who suffered minor injuries, apparently knew the people involved, and investigators were trying to determine whether the assault was related to the allegations against him.

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About 275 breath tests for suspected DWIs may have been impacted by “human error,” the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension said Monday.

Prosecutors and the Minnesota Attorney General’s office will need to examine each case individually to make a determination, according to BCA Superintendent Drew Evans.

DataMaster machines are stationed at law enforcement offices around the state, used by officers to give breath tests to people suspected of driving while intoxicated and taken into custody. Errors have been “identified … in particular when changing out a dry gas cylinder that is used for a control test,” Evans said.

The more detailed information from Evans came after the BCA announced Friday that it had ordered all law enforcement agencies in the state to suspend usage of DataMaster instruments until they verified that gas cylinder data was correctly entered into each instrument.

It’s a 5-minute inspection and then law enforcement agencies can return to using them, Evans said. St. Paul police and the sheriff’s offices for Ramsey, Dakota and Washington counties were among those who said Monday they have resumed using the breath tests.

Roseville-based attorney Chuck Ramsay said he discovered the issue in 2023 in Olmsted County, then again in August while defending a man charged with DWI in Aitkin County. On Oct. 2, the prosecutor’s office dismissed the charges.

Throughout the state, 19,000-20,000 Datamaster tests are conducted each year and there have been 15,000 tests so far this year, according to the BCA.

The state began deploying the DataMaster in 2010, with the bulk going out in 2012, Ramsay said.

“Nobody knows right now how many have been affected,” Ramsay said, adding it could reach into the thousands.

Initial errors were discovered in Aitkin, Winona and Chippewa counties, and the BCA said they became aware on Friday of two more instruments with data entry errors related to gas cylinder installation in Hennepin and Olmsted counties.

“It doesn’t necessarily mean, even if there were errors, that the test results themselves were not reliable,” Evans said. “… This is a very technical piece in this equipment. The reliability of the results really do need to be examined on a case-by-case basis.”

220 machines throughout state

There are 220 DataMaster instruments and about 4,500 law enforcement officers certified to use them in Minnesota. They go through three days of training and get a 4-hour refresher every two years, according to the BCA.

The DataMaster machines are placed at various law enforcement departments and are used by multiple agencies in the geographic area.

A DataMaster machine is seen in the pre-booking area outside the Ramsey County jail in St. Paul on Oct. 13, 2025. (Mara H. Gottfried / Pioneer Press)

“This has not impacted Minnesota law enforcement’s ability to conduct DWI enforcement across Minnesota,” Evans said. Many DataMaster machines have already been examined “and they can go right back online because they’re accurate in the testing process,” Evans added.

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Ramsay, the criminal defense attorney, said he knows of fewer than 10 cases where DWI charges have been dismissed by prosecutors and those cases have been outside of the metro.

“I’m unaware in the metro of any (being dismissed),” he said. “But it’s not a matter of if; it’s a matter of how soon.”

In Ramsay’s client’s case, the state attorney general’s office reversed the man’s driver’s license revocation.

“The BCA agreed with me that not only was my client’s test invalid, but all 73 samples that were run on that for that entire year were also invalid,” he said.

Attorney: People with pending cases should plead not guilty

The BCA has a calibration team that manages, inspects and maintains DataMasters. They will now be the staff that changes out the gas cylinders, Evans said.

“By bringing this change process into a fewer number of people, we’re able to eliminate some of those errors along the way,” Evans said.

There has also been an instance discovered of the wrong cylinder, which was not provided by the BCA, being installed, according to the BCA.

Ramsay noted that the “bad control” isn’t used to measure a driver’s alcohol concentration, but to ensure that readings are accurate.

“The BCA will concede without that, they lose that guarantee of accuracy,” he said.

Ramsay suggested that anyone in Minnesota who has a pending DWI case plead not guilty.

“And if they have pending license revocation, they should hire an attorney to challenge it,” he said.

When it comes to past convictions, “that’s one of the ways it gets really messy,” he said.

“Who this really impacts are commercial vehicle drivers because if they get a DWI, for the most part, their career is over. And that, I mean, that could be devastating to a family forever. And those are the people that I really feel for and others who may have spent time in jail or may be in jail now.”

Determining extent of problems

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As of late Monday afternoon, the BCA had not heard from additional law enforcement agencies about finding any problems in their inspections, Evans said.

“But we’ll be working as part of this inspection process to determine if any others have challenges with them,” he said.

DataMaster machines are calibrated at the BCA each year, and staff has not seen the same issues with the cylinders in the past, according to Evans.

When the BCA was first notified of the problem, “we had no reason to believe it was a more widespread problem with the instrumentation,” he said.

Most DWI cases are misdemeanors and gross misdemeanors that are prosecuted by city attorneys, according to Ramsey County Attorney’s Office spokesman Dennis Gerhardstein. The felony cases prosecuted by the county attorney’s office “are a small subset of the overall number of DWI cases,” he said.

“We have not been made aware of any felony DWI cases that have been presented to our office which involved the use of the device you reference,” Gerhardstein said. “If that changes, we will respond accordingly as justice requires.”

Mary Divine contributed to this report.

By PATRICK WHITTLE

BOOTHBAY HARBOR, Maine (AP) — Republican lawmakers are targeting one of the U.S.’s longest standing pieces of environmental legislation, credited with helping save rare whales from extinction.

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Conservative leaders feel they now have the political will to remove key pieces of the Marine Mammal Protection Act, enacted in 1972 to protect whales, seals, polar bears and other sea animals. The law also places restrictions on commercial fishermen, shippers and other marine industries.

A GOP-led bill in the works has support from fishermen in Maine who say the law makes lobster fishing more difficult, lobbyists for big-money species such as tuna in Hawaii and crab in Alaska, and marine manufacturers who see the law as antiquated.

Conservation groups adamantly oppose the changes and say weakening the law will erase years of hard-won gains for jeopardized species such as the vanishing North Atlantic right whale, of which there are less than 400, and is vulnerable to entanglement in fishing gear.

Here’s what to know about the protection act and the proposed changes.

Why does the 1970s law still matter

“The Marine Mammal Protection Act is important because it’s one of our bedrock laws that help us to base conservation measures on the best available science,” said Kathleen Collins, senior marine campaign manager with International Fund for Animal Welfare. “Species on the brink of extinction have been brought back.”

It was enacted the year before the Endangered Species Act, at a time when the movement to save whales from extinction was growing. Scientist Roger Payne had discovered that whales could sing in the late 1960s, and their voices soon appeared on record albums and throughout popular culture.

The law protects all marine mammals, and prohibits capturing or killing them in U.S. waters or by U.S. citizens on the high seas. It allowed for preventative measures to stop commercial fishing ships and other businesses from accidentally harming animals such as whales and seals. The animals can be harmed by entanglement in fishing gear, collisions with ships and other hazards at sea.

The law also prevents the hunting of marine mammals, including polar bears, with exceptions for Indigenous groups. Some of those animals can be legally hunted in other countries.

Changes to oil and gas operations — and whale safety

Republican Rep. Nick Begich of Alaska, a state with a large fishing industry, submitted a bill draft this summer that would roll back aspects of the law. The bill says the act has “unduly and unnecessarily constrained government, tribes and the regulated community” since its inception.

The proposal states that it would make changes such as lowering population goals for marine mammals from “maximum productivity” to the level needed to “support continued survival.” It would also ease rules on what constitutes harm to marine mammals.

AP illustration Marshall Ritzel

For example, the law currently prevents harassment of sea mammals such as whales, and defines harassment as activities that have “the potential to injure a marine mammal.” The proposed changes would limit the definition to only activities that actually injure the animals. That change could have major implications for industries such as oil and gas exploration where rare whales live.

That poses an existential threat to the Rice’s whale, which numbers only in the dozens and lives in the Gulf of Mexico, conservationists said. And the proposal takes specific aim at the North Atlantic right whale protections with a clause that would delay rules designed to protect that declining whale population until 2035.

Begich and his staff did not return calls for comment on the bill, and his staff declined to provide an update about where it stands in Congress. Begich has said he wants “a bill that protects marine mammals and also works for the people who live and work alongside them, especially in Alaska.”

Fishing groups want restrictions loosened

A coalition of fishing groups from both coasts has come out in support of the proposed changes. Some of the same groups lauded a previous effort by the Trump administration to reduce regulatory burdens on commercial fishing.

The groups said in a July letter to House members that they feel Begich’s changes reflect “a positive and necessary step” for American fisheries’ success.

Restrictions imposed on lobster fishermen of Maine are designed to protect the right whale, but they often provide little protection for the animals while limiting one of America’s signature fisheries, Virginia Olsen, political director of the Maine Lobstering Union, said. The restrictions stipulate where lobstermen can fish and what kinds of gear they can use. The whales are vulnerable to lethal entanglement in heavy fishing rope.

Gathering more accurate data about right whales while revising the original law would help protect the animals, Olsen said.

“We do not want to see marine mammals harmed; we need a healthy, vibrant ocean and a plentiful marine habitat to continue Maine’s heritage fishery,” Olsen said.

A harbor seal rests on a submerged ledge near fishermen harvesting herring, Monday, Oct. 6, 2025, off Portland, Maine. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)

Some members of other maritime industries have also called on Congress to update the law. The National Marine Manufacturers Association said in a statement that the rules have not kept pace with advancements in the marine industry, making innovation in the business difficult.

Environmentalists fight back

Numerous environmental groups have vowed to fight to save the protection act. They characterized the proposed changes as part of the Trump administration’s assault on environmental protections.

The act was instrumental in protecting the humpback whale, one of the species most beloved by whale watchers, said Gib Brogan, senior campaign director with Oceana. Along with other sea mammals, humpbacks would be in jeopardy without it, he said.

“The Marine Mammal Protection Act is flexible. It works. It’s effective. We don’t need to overhaul this law at this point,” Brogan said.

What does this mean for seafood imports

The original law makes it illegal to import marine mammal products without a permit, and allows the U.S. to impose import prohibitions on seafood products from foreign fisheries that don’t meet U.S. standards.

The import embargoes are a major sticking point because they punish American businesses, said Gavin Gibbons, chief strategy officer of the National Fisheries Institute, a Virginia-based seafood industry trade group. It’s critical to source seafood globally to be able to meet American demand for seafood, he said.

The National Fisheries Institute and a coalition of industry groups sued the federal government Thursday over what they described as unlawful implementation of the protection act. Gibbons said the groups don’t oppose the act, but want to see it responsibly implemented.

“Our fisheries are well regulated and appropriately fished to their maximum sustainable yield,” Gibbons said. “The men and women who work our waters are iconic and responsible. They can’t be expected to just fish more here to make up a deficit while jeopardizing the sustainability they’ve worked so hard to maintain.”

Some environmental groups said the Republican lawmakers’ proposed changes could weaken American seafood competitiveness by allowing imports from poorly regulated foreign fisheries.

This story was supported by funding from the Walton Family Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.