On a night that might ultimately prove costly, the Minnesota Wild got a third period goal from Marcus Johansson and survived a slugfest in Seattle, fighting through injuries and inconsistency for a hard-fought 4-1 win over the Kraken on Monday.

Johansson had a picture-perfect redirection of a Joel Eriksson Ek shot to break a 1-1 tie, and Wild goalie Filip Gustavsson had 23 saves as Minnesota snapped a two-game losing streak and ended its lengthy western road trip on an optimistic note.

But the two points came at a price for the Wild, who lost forward Mats Zuccarello, defenseman Jake Middleton, forward Matt Boldy and forward Nico Sturm at various times throughout the game.

“Obviously it was a physical, highly-contested game, by both teams,” Wild coach John Hynes said. “I liked liked our response. I thought we played hard and we played smart, and I think that’s what you want to do in those situations.”

Eriksson Ek had a second period goal for the Wild, who likely employed plenty of ice packs on their late-night charter back to the Twin Cities. Kirill Kaprizov and Vladimir Tarasenko added late empty net goals.

“It wasn’t easy tonight, a few guys short. We dug in there and I think we showed a lot of character and grit today,” said Johansson who was red hot in November, then snapped a five-game drought without a point by scoring on Monday. “It was a fun game and a big two points for us.”

Facing the NHL’s worst penalty killers, statistically, the Wild had early opportunities, first when Boldy was tripped barely a minute into the game, and again when Kaprizov took an inadvertent high stick to the cheek. They gave Seattle goalie Philipp Grubauer plenty of first period work, including a Ryan Hartman breakaway, but he was up to the puck-stopping task.

Then things went downhill, quickly, for the Wild with five minutes left in the first. Zuccarello, skating through the neutral zone with the puck, was taken out by a high, hard check from Seattle defenseman Vince Dunn. Initially called a major penalty on Dunn, referees looked at the video and downgraded it to a clean hit, and Seattle ended up with a power play.

The bigger loss was Zuccarello, the team’s top-line wing, who headed down the tunnel to the locker room and did not return. With Zuccarello unavailable, the Wild went with an all-Russian top line much of the rest of the game – rookie Danila Yurov centering Kaprizov and Tarasenko.

“He’s doing OK,” Hynes said when asked for an update on Zuccarello after the game. “I saw him back there now, but I don’t know what the timeline would be.”

The coach said there would be updates on Zuccarello, Boldy, Middleton and Sturm — who returned and played the game’s final two minutes — once the team is back in Minnesota and the players can be more fully evaluated.

Minnesota finally broke the scoreless deadlock early in the middle frame when Eriksson Ek slipped a low shot between Grubauer’s knees after a pass from Boldy, who was behind the net.

But the lead, and the momentum, went away relatively quickly. Seattle scored on a power play before the game’s midway point, and Grubauer was again on his game, stopping a Yakov Trenin shorthanded breakaway later in the second.

Just nine seconds after Johansson’s go-ahead goal, Seattle briefly thought it had re-tied the game, when Tye Kartye swatted a puck out of the air, off Gustavsson’s back and into the net. Officials almost immediately ruled no goal, and replays confirmed that Kartye had played the puck with a high stick.

Trenin, who has led the NHL in hits for much of the season, continued his high-contact game on Monday, recording a season-high nine hits in the win.

Grubauer finished with 25 saves for Seattle, which has now lost five in a row. The Kraken host Minnesota again in a month, with the Wild closing out a seven-game road trek on Jan. 8 in Seattle.

The Wild will play their next four at home, starting Thursday when the Dallas Stars make their first visit of the season to Grand Casino Arena.

Briefly

The Wild went with 11 forwards and seven defensemen on Monday, scratching fourth-line forward Tyler Pitlick and adding reserve defenseman Daemon Hunt to the lineup. Hunt had been a healthy scratch for the previous eight games. Pitlick has played in 18 games for Minnesota this season, and is still looking for his first point with his home state NHL team. The alignment made things tougher when Zuccarello left the game, leaving Minnesota with just 10 forwards for the final two periods.

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Minnesota got off to another slow start, which has been a constant in its previous five victories. But the Timberwolves had always been able to dig themselves out of holes with strong second-half performances.

Yet the Wolves flew too close to the Suns on Monday, as Phoenix held on for a 108-105 victory at Target Center to snap Minnesota’s winning streak.

Minnesota trailed by three with the ball and six seconds to play, but Jaden McDaniels’ potential game-tying attempt clanked off the iron.

Anthony Edwards was questionable entering the evening with an illness, but he played and delivered one of his most efficient offensive performances of the season. He finished with 40 points on 15 for 21 shooting to go with nine boards.

But the rest of Minnesota’s offense struggled. All Wolves not named Edwards and Julius Randle combined to shoot 33% from the floor.

“We’ve got to shoot the ball better,” Wolves coach Chris Finch said. “I thought a lot of them were decent looks.”

Jaden McDaniels, Donte DiVincenzo and Naz Reid were a combined 4 for 26 from the field.

Rudy Gobert was having a nice night, dominating Phoenix’s smaller frontcourt. He had 15 points and eight rebounds in 21 minutes before he was ejected in the third quarter for a flagrant-2 foul after shoving an airborne Mark Williams in the back on his dunk attempt.

Gobert is now one flagrant foul away from a one-game suspension.

Bones Hyland gave Minnesota a nice offensive spark. He played in favor of Rob Dillingham and produced for 14 points and three assists in 16 minutes.

“We were 24 games in and I thought it was time to try something different,” Finch said. “He’s been patient, doing really well in practice, doing everything we asked him to do.”

All five of Phoenix’s starters scored in double figures, led by Williams, who tallied 22 points and seven rebounds. The Wolves are now 0-2 this season against Phoenix.

ORLANDO — The Twins are planning on hanging onto their stars at this time. Now, the question for the remainder of the offseason is how they can best build around them and bring the team back to a competitive level.

This, Twins president of baseball and business operations Derek Falvey had maintained all along, was his hope, though he admitted he didn’t always know if it was path the team would take.

Given the team’s financial situation and on the heels of last July’s sell off, rumors had swirled about starting pitchers Joe Ryan and Pablo López. Even Byron Buxton, who holds a no-trade clause, had been the subject of speculation, with a report suggesting he might waive it if the team was headed into a rebuild.  López and Buxton are the team’s highest-paid players and if rebuilding was the path the Twins opted for, they would be logical trade candidates.

Ultimately, they chose otherwise.

“I was hopeful … that we’d get to this place, but I always knew there could be different paths that we could choose,” Falvey said Monday at MLB’s Winter Meetings. “I think, at this stage, figuring a way to add to this group was clearly the best fit for all what we aligned around.”

New Twins manager Derek Shelton said his assumption when he took the job in late October was that the trio would be part of the team. But still, he thought it was important that they heard it from him and wanted to reinforce that in his conversations with them this offseason.

With that settled, the question turns to how the Twins are going to improve the team around them and what areas they need to upgrade after stripping down the roster at the trade deadline and shipping away 10 major leaguers.

Five of the traded players were relievers, and adding to the bullpen is the team’s most obvious need at this point. The rebuilt bullpen will likely be a mix of players already on the roster, starters converted to relievers and external additions. On the position player side, general manager Jeremy Zoll referenced their desire to add “another bat or two with some thump, with some impact.” First base seems like a natural place to add.

Their ability to add to the roster, of course, comes back to payroll and the Twins have made no indication publicly about the payroll flexibility they might have, though they’re certainly not expected to be big spenders. The addition of two limited partners joining the Pohlad family in ownership was announced in August, and there’s still a question of how those two groups might affect the team’s payroll.

Falvey did indicate that there should be news on the limited partners in “the near term.” He also mentioned presenting options for the direction of the team to a larger ownership group with a “few more people that we get to talk to about it.”

“Jeremy and I had a number of conversations internally with our group and then ultimately with ownership to discuss what that could look like going forward and we’ll continue to work closely with them through the offseason in terms of navigating what  comes next,” Falvey said. “But my job, our collective job, is to figure out ways that we can add some pieces to the group that we have now.”

The Twins finished last season in fourth place, leading to the firing of Rocco Baldelli and the dismissal of some of his coaching staff. But some of the players they got in return — like Taj Bradley and Mick Abel and Alan Roden — are major-league ready and Falvey said it was always on his mind that the Twins would “find a way to retool,” the group on the fly and add to a group that they thought could compete.

“It’s going to take some creative work in trying to figure out how to plug some holes,” Falvey said. “Ultimately we’re going to need some guys to step up, but that’s probably always going to be our situation to some degree.”

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Freddy Gaudreau had family in town on Sunday night, so the Seattle Kraken forward didn’t make it over to the Minnesota Wild’s team hotel to see some old friends.

He figured he would be seeing enough of them on Monday night at the rink anyway.

Gaudreau, 32, is in his first season with the Kraken, and Monday night’s game was his first in his new uniform versus his former team. He had spent the previous four years with the Wild, playing all 88 regular season and playoff games for Minnesota last season.

“A lot of people I love over there, and a lot of really good memories. That never changes,” Gaudreau said following the Kraken’s morning skate. “But it’s just another game and my only focus is on my job and what I can do to help my team win.”

He was traded to Seattle in late June and entered Monday’s game having played in 13 contests with the Kraken, posting a goal and two assists. He missed the second half of October and the first half of November due to a stint on injured reserve, dealing with an upper body injury. Injuries were a rarity for Gaudreau in Minnesota, where he was a regular season iron man in two of his four years with the Wild.

“First-class human being. He’s a great, great kid, great teammate, was awesome to coach, very smart player, cares about the team,” Wild coach John Hynes told reporters in Seattle following the team’s morning skate at Climate Pledge Arena. “Kind of a jack-of-all-trades, he did so much for us. He could play wing, center, power play, penalty kill. Great person and a really good player.”

Having spent so much time in Minnesota, Gaudreau offered a Wild scouting report without revealing many secrets. It was already fairly well-known that stopping Kirill Kaprizov and Mats Zuccarello is a key to success for Wild foes.

“When they’re on the ice, you’ve got to make sure you’re D-side,” said Gaudreau, who originally signed a free agent contract with the Wild in the summer of 2021. “They’ve got some good chemistry too. They know where the other guys are. It kind of feels especially like Zuccy and Kirill know where the other guy is. You can’t take a moment to zone out. You always have to be dialed in and focused.”

Known as one of the truly nice guys on the roster during his time in Minnesota, Gaudreau had nothing but good things to say about his former employer.

“They’ve got some superpower, for sure They’ve got some guys you’ve got to make sure you know when they’re on the ice,” he said. “They’re a strong team. They’re deep. Good goaltending, those games are always good matchups. We have to get ready for 60 (minutes) for sure.”

The Wild entered Monday’s game with a 5-1-0 all-time record versus the Kraken in Seattle.

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