Late goal sinks Wild in Montreal

In the end, the Wild held an early lead, rallied to tie in the second and third periods but couldn’t finish off a sweep of their three-game road trip.

Cole Caufield scored with 15 seconds left in the third for the Montreal Canadiens, lifting them to a 4-3 win.

Vladimir Tarasenko scored twice and Brock Faber got a goal for Minnesota, which comes home for its next four games in St. Paul. The Wild got 29 saves from Jesper Wallstedt in the loss.

“Wally played great. Kept us in it all night,” Faber said. “They got a fast hockey team. Every single guy can skate and move. It’s hard to win here in this building. We didn’t have our best tonight, and like I said, Wally kept us in it. I thought we pushed back well at times and gave ourselves a chance.”

The Wild looked discombobulated early and their hosts pounced, outshooting Minnesota 7-1 before the first period was half over.

The tide turned, briefly, when Faber was tripped, and Minnesota needed just 15 seconds of man advantage to take the lead. It was the fourth goal of the three-game road trip for Tarasenko and the 32nd time the Wild had scored first this season, which is tied with Washington for tops in the NHL.

But the Canadiens didn’t let it get them down, forging a tie on Phillip Danault’s first goal of the season, then treading a long range shot by Alexandre Carrier through a crowd in the final minute of the first to lead 2-1 after the first. Montreal outshot Minnesota 15-2 in the opening 20 minutes.

“They came out hot and ready, and we weathered the storm of it,” Wild coach John Hynes said. “We got some good goaltending early, but then I feel like our guys really dug in and simplified the game, and, you know, got ourselves back competitively into the game, and that’s what you need to do.”

The middle frame wake-up call came at the right time for the Wild, who tied the score when a Faber shot from long range slipped through a screen provided by Vinnie Hinostroza at the net front. But the momentum disappeared quickly, as the Canadiens went up 3-2 on a goal by Lane Hutson barely two minutes after Faber’s tying goal to lead after two periods.

The Wild’s golden chance came with eight minutes left in the third, as consecutive penalties on the Habs gave Minnesota 45 seconds of a 5-on-3 power play. The Wild called a timeout to rest their top man-advantage unit, and Tarasenko squeezed in a shot from the goal line to knot the game once again.

“We had a slow start, and our goalie kept us in the game, gave us a chance to compete in the second and the third, and we got ourselves in the game,” Tarasenko said. “Some nights you lose a game, you have to take the lessons from this game and move on.”

Former Ohio State standout goalie Jakub Dobes had 16 saves for Montreal, which makes its lone trip to Minnesota this season on Feb. 2.