DETROIT – For those who like hard hits, or great goaltending, or controversial calls, or impactful special teams, or late-game drama, or villains becoming heroes, or nearly any other hockey trope you can think of, the Minnesota Wild’s return from a two-week break had a little bit of all of that — and more.

When the last of the ice chips had settled onto the frozen surface of Little Caesars Arena, the Wild had rallied from two goals down with less than seven minutes to play in regulation, they had tied the game with an extra attacker on the ice, they had killed a rare overtime penalty on a call that — let’s just say — was interesting, and they got the winner on a breakaway after Marco Rossi was freed from what he said felt like the longest two minutes of his career.

Minnesota 4, Detroit 3 in overtime. And it was so much fun that they’ll do it all again on Tuesday when the Red Wings come to St. Paul for the rematch.

“It’s a huge two points and a huge, huge battle from every guy,” said defenseman Brock Faber, who came back from his stellar work at the 4 Nations Face-Off to log more than 30 minutes of ice time on Saturday.

With the Wild controlling the play in overtime, Rossi swiped at the puck, trying to pry it away from Detroit forward Patrick Kane. Kane took a stride, then went down in what Wild fans would call a dive, drawing the penalty and giving the Red Wings two minutes of a 4-on-3 advantage.

But Marc-Andre Fleury made two of his 27 saves for the game to keep the Wings off the board, just long enough for Joel Eriksson-Ek to feed Rossi with a pass as the diminutive Austrian got out of the box, springing Rossi on a breakaway. Rossi appeared to lose control of the puck as he neared the crease, but it slipped past Detroit goalie Cam Talbot and over the line anyway, giving the Wild their sixth win in the past eight games.

“It didn’t feel like two minutes, to be honest,” Rossi said of his stay in solitary confinement. Ask to describe how he scored the game-winner, he gave away no secrets.

As Alex DeBrincat gave the home team an early lead, Minnesota struggled to find offense anywhere near the Detroit crease until the final seconds of the opening period, when Talbot thwarted a point-blank shot by Marcus Johansson to keep the Wild scoreless.

Detroit began the middle frame with a strong push, testing Fleury a half-dozen times, and getting the game’s first power play. DeBrincat got a puck at the top of the crease during the man advantage and snapped a shot that beat Fleury but hit the pipe and crossbar before settling in the crease behind the goalie. While DeBrincat celebrated what he thought was his goal, Dylan Larkin celebrated as well, then swatted the loose puck over the goal line. After a lengthy video review, it was declared a good goal for Larkin, doubling the Red Wings’ advantage.

When the Wild finally got a power play, they made it count, with Matt Boldy’s shot from the blue line tipped in front of the net by Hinostroza. The puck popped up over the goalie and Hinstroza was able to knock it out of the air and over the goal line. It was the second goal for Hinostroza in the three Wild games he has played since being claimed off waivers from Nashville on Feb. 5.

With 20 seconds left in the period, Faber was leveled by DeBrincat while coming around the back of the Detroit net. It was a clean by hard check, which produced a roar from the crowd, and touched off a scrum when Boldy and Rossi came to Faber’s defense. It ended with the Red Wings back on the power play as Boldy drew two penalties, while Detroit’s Andrew Copp received a roughing minor, but no further punishment despite delivering an elbow to Boldy’s head during the clash.

“It’s a brotherhood here. We’re all family,” Faber said. “To get hit like that, having guys step in for you. Obviously I’d do the same, and any guy in that scrum would’ve done the same. It means a lot to me.”

Detroit needed just 22 seconds of power play at the start of the third to go up 3-1 when Lucas Raymond ripped a wrist shot into the upper right corner behind Fleury. DeBrincat was in the crease when the shot came in and made slight contact with Fleury, prompting a challenge by the Wild. After another thorough review, the goal was allowed to stand. The unsuccessful challenge meant a delay of game penalty on the Wild, giving Detroit its third power play of the game, but the Wild killed it off.

“That’s big. We needed a kill there when we had the challenge and it didn’t go our way,” Wild coach John Hynes said. “That’s where you have to be able to get a kill and come up big and we were able to do that and I thought it built some momentum for us moving forward.”

With a delayed penalty upcoming on Detroit, Boldy put the puck low and through a crowd in front of Talbot to pull Minnesota back within a goal, only to see the Red Wings kill the ensuing Wild power play.

But they sent Fleury to the bench for an extra attacker with more than two minutes to play, and Marcus Foligno banked a shot off the goalie and in to forge a tie with 91 seconds left in regulation.

Talbot, the former Wild goalie and one of Fleury’s good friends, finished with 35 saves for Detroit.

By getting the start on Saturday, Fleury appeared in his 1,045th career NHL game, moving him into second place in the league’s record books for games played by a goalie. He is also second — to New Jersey legend Martin Brodeur — in minutes played and wins.

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FORT MYERS, Fla. — There was a little moment of awe for Zebby Matthews last August, when, after a meteoric rise through the Twins’ farm system, he saw Royals star Salvador Perez’s name in the opposing lineup before his major league debut.

“I’m like, ‘I’ve watched this guy play for 15 years,’” Matthews said. “It’s nuts.”

Matthews began last season at Single-A Cedar Rapids. A trip to Double-A Wichita preceded a quick stint in Triple-A before he debuted for Minnesota in August. The whole year was a whirlwind for Matthews, 24. But after sprinting through the minors, there’s plenty left for him to prove.

“It was definitely surreal to go from where I was to debut last year,” Matthews, who threw two scoreless innings and touched 97 mph on Saturday in the Twins’ 3-1 win over the Atlanta Braves in the spring opener at Hammond Stadium, said. “It was awesome, but it’s just the beginning. The job doesn’t stop.”

In his first taste of the majors, Matthews posted a 6.69 ERA. The starter’s command wasn’t quite as sharp in the majors after walking just seven batters in 97 minor league innings, and he was capped at five innings, not working past that point in any of his nine starts.

“I just want to show them that I can pitch at this level,” Matthews said. “Last year in the big leagues, I had a lot of up-and-down starts, some good, some really bad. Just to show them that I belong, I can do this. I can make a career out of it.”

Matthews spent the offseason working on his changeup, which he is trying to establish as another option to throw to lefties. Throughout last year, he said he was trying to get comfortable throwing the pitch in the zone or in games but he could never get it just right. Now, he thinks he’s trending in the right direction with the pitch.

“I feel bad for my catch play partner I had this offseason,” Matthews said. “I was tearing him up with some changeups.”

It was an offseason of trial and error but finally, about two weeks before heading down to Fort Myers, he settled on a grip and started getting more comfortable. Early word from Trackman data, and teammates and coaches that have seen it, he said, have been positive as he works towards getting it where he needs it to be.

While Matthews seems likely to begin the year at Triple-A — where he made just four starts last year — he’ll serve as an important depth option for the Twins while he continues to develop.

“Zebby is a good-looking, young, horse of a man,” manager Rocco Baldelli said. “He put himself in a nice spot. He has a lot of the makings of a good major league starting pitcher.”

ABS challenge system in use

The Twins’ first challenge of the spring was a successful one.

Catcher Christian Vázquez initiated a challenge during the first inning of the game, believing a two-strike pitch from Matthews on the corner was a strike, despite the call from home plate umpire Marvin Hudson. After a quick review shown on the Hammond Stadium scoreboard, the call was overturned and Matthews was out of the inning, stranding a runner on second base.

“He hesitated for a little bit and then he hit it,” Matthews said of the catcher. “I thought it might be a little bit away. No, we clipped the zone. That was cool to see.”

MLB is testing out the automated ball-strike challenge system — which has been used in the minor leagues in previous years — this spring for potential implementation in future years. It will not be used at the major league level this year.

Briefly

David Festa, another young starter who debuted last season, is expected to start the Twins’ second contest of the spring when they head north to Bradenton on Sunday to face the Pittsburgh Pirates. … Luke Keaschall, the Twins’ Minor League Player of the Year, drove in two runs with a single in his first at-bat in the Twins’ win over the Braves.

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FORT MYERS, Fla. — Justin Ishbia may buy a major league baseball team after all. It just won’t be the one that he’s been linked to for months.

After a winter of speculation over whether Ishbia would buy the Minnesota Twins, the billionaire businessman has instead decided to increase his stake in the rival Chicago White Sox and end his pursuit of the Twins, The Athletic reported late Friday night.

Ishbia already is a minority owner of the White Sox and the move could lead to full ownership of the team in the future should longtime majority owner Jerry Reinsdorf decide to sell, The Athletic suggested. Ishbia is a founding partner of a Chicago-based private equity firm and has been building a house along the lakeshore in Chicago’s north suburbs.

But despite his Chicago ties, his name first emerged as a prospective buyer of the Twins in December, a couple months after the Pohlad family announced its intention to explore a sale of the Twins, which it has owned since 1984. To date, Ishbia’s name was the only one that has leaked into the public as a potential buyer of the Twins.

Though he is reportedly no longer involved, a source with knowledge of the situation said there are “more than a handful,” of prospective buyers, noting that a “new party” entered the mix just last week. The process, the source said, is “certainly closer to the end than the beginning.”

“The process goes on,” the source said. “It was never dependent on any one party and it’s going to continue irrespective of any other news.”

The prospect of Ishbia buying the team had been an exciting one to many Twins fans, who pointed to his brother Mat’s aggressive style of ownership of the NBA’s Phoenix Suns as an example of what Justin could do for the Twins. Justin is a part owner of the Suns, as Mat likely would’ve been with the Twins had the brothers taken that route.

Now, it’s possible that they’ll bring that style of ownership to the South Side of Chicago down the line rather than the Twin Cities.

Meanwhile, details about any potential Twins sale have been scarce as the process has unfolded behind the scenes. The Pohlad family announced its intention to explore a sale on Oct. 10, stating in a release that the decision had been made after “months of thoughtful consideration,” and hired New York-based investment bank Allen & Company to facilitate the sale.

“The process is underway and, as expected, there’s significant interest,” outgoing team president and CEO Dave St. Peter said last month. “This is a gem of a franchise, in a great market, in a wonderful ballpark, so it doesn’t really surprise me at all. But there’s also no definitive timetable on the process.”

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After upsetting Southern Cal and UCLA on the road, the Gophers returned with a chance to essentially seal a Big Ten tournament bid against Penn State, another team fighting to extend its season into the conference tournament.

The Gophers won the previous meeting in University Park, 69-61, but the Nittany Lions were missing a big piece in that game, 7-foot center Yanic Konan Niederhauser. And, boy, did it make a difference.

Konan Niederhauser just about had his way in the paint and scored a game-high 24 points, to go with seven rebounds, as Penn State Penn State (15-13, 5-12) won the rematch, 69-60, on Saturday at Williams Arena.

Minnesota (14-13, 6-10) didn’t have the size to contend with the center, who missed the last game because of a sprained ankle, and got little scoring from their bigs — even Big Ten co-scoring leader Dawson Garcia (19.7 ppg.), who finished with a game-high 10 rebounds by was 3 for 16 from the field and finished with 11 points, an assist and three turnovers.

Femi Odukale, who picked up two quick fouls and played only 21 minutes, scored a game-high 15 points for Minnesota, keying a late rally that fell short despite the encouragement of a lively, and fairly robust, crowd.

Minnesota had leads of as many as nine points through the game’s first 11 minutes. Then it all kinda came apart for the Gophers, who went without a field goal for the final 9:01 of the first half.

On the other end, the Nittany Lions started playing better offensively, not just making their shot attempts, but passing better, driving effectively and getting the ball to big man Yanic Konan Niederhauser. The Lions outscored the Gophers, 13-2, over the final xx minutes to take their first lead, 28-26, into intermission

The momentum stayed Penn State’s way until the Gophers began chipping away at their deficit with a little more than 5 minutes left. A dunk and free throw by Odukale cut the deficit to nine points and started a 14-5 run that saw Minnesota pull within 60-57 with 1:31 left in regulation.

But Penn State answered by making 6 of 6 free throws, and the game ended when Konan Niederhauser dunked for a three-point play and blocked a shot as time was about to expire.

The Gophers got as close as three points, 60-57

Konan Niederhauser, who missed the Gophers’ 69-61 victory at Penn State because of a sprained ankle, was tough to guard for Minnesota on Saturday. The lanky 7-footer weaved his way through post traffic — and undersized defenders — to score a game-high 24 points. He was 9 for 14 from the floor and made 6 of 7 free throw attempts.

And it wasn’t just Konan Niederhauser. Penn State was strong at the rim in general, while the Gophers often settled for outside shots, sometimes putting up desperation shots as the shot clock was about to expire.

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