Wild thrilled to open road trip with gritty, come-from-behind win over Jets

WINNIPEG — The Minnesota Wild snapped a two-game losing streak on Saturday by handing the Winnipeg Jets their fifth straight loss.

Matt Boldy scored his second goal of the game 39 seconds into overtime to lead the Wild to a 4-3 come-from-behind win before a sold-out crowd of 15,225 at Canada Life Centre.

“I think it’s good,” said Wild coach John Hynes. “I mean, we knew we were coming in here losing the last two games off the break. And this is a big stretch of games for us as well as a big trip. And I give the guys a lot of credit.

“I thought we did a really good job of sticking with it and overcoming some adversity at the end of the second period. And that’s what we need. We’re gonna spend a lot of time together. We’ve got six more big games on the trip.”

The Jets had scored two quick goals — by Kyle Connor and Mark Scheifele — in the final 2:04 of the second to take a 3-2 lead into the third period.

“So, to start off with a good win in the fashion that it was, hopefully should set us up moving forward here on the trip,” Hynes said.

Mats Zuccarello scored the tying goal on the power play and goalie Jesper Wallstedt pulled with 21 seconds left in the third to force the OT. Dylan DeMelo had taken a cross-checking penalty when he took exception to Josh Morrissey being checked into the boards by Joel Eriksson Ek and no penalty was called.

“That’s a terrible non-call on Josh Morrissey,” said Jets coach Scott Arniel. “It should have been called. Head-first into the boards. And then, a ticky-tacky little call (on DeMelo) after that.

“Any other top players in the league, elite players, get hit from behind into the boards, I’m pretty sure that’s a penalty.”

That sent the game into overtime, where the Wild pulled out the victory.

“Yeah, it’s huge,” said Boldy, who had knotted the score at 1-1 late in the first period. “A long trip, to start off positive and keep that energy up after a long day and an early flight, that’s huge for us. So, we got to use that to our advantage for the game (against Vegas) coming up.”

The Wild stuck with it after being stung by those two quick goals.

“I didn’t think it was a bad game from us,” Boldy said. “I didn’t think it was our best, but just sticking with it, taking the positives and getting back on track I think is the biggest thing.

“For us, when we’re playing hard and simple and letting the plays come to us rather than force them, that’s what makes us good. I think, in the second there, we were forcing a little bit too much and trying to make too many plays, and (we) went out for the third and kind of simplified a bit and found a way to tie it up.”

Kirill Kaprizov scored the other Minnesota goal and Quinn Hughes added three assists.

Wallstedt made 23 saves.

“It’s a hard game,” he said. “They get a couple good looks and they capitalized on some of them, but I just keep reminding myself to just try to keep the team in the game, make the next save and do my best to make sure there’s still a chance to win the game. Fortunately today, we could and the guys came up big.

“I thought, overall, most of the game was a tight-fought match. Obviously, at the end of the second, we kind of made some small mistakes and they ended up capitalizing on their chances. But I thought the game overall was tight throughout and at the end there, we knew maybe we had an extra level and we put that in and I thought we created a lot and obviously capitalized at the end.”

Morrissey scored the other goal for the Jets, who lost yet another one-goal game.

“To me, that was a strong effort, it really was a strong effort by us,” Arniel said. “It’s something that should have been two points. We’ve got to make sure, those one-goal games, we’ve got to find a way. That one had a little bit different feel to it. That had a different outcome than maybe some of the past ones have.

“Nobody’s happy about that. Nobody’s happy about losing. We wanted both points. We need both points. We didn’t get it.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 28, 2025.