Kirill Kaprizov gives Wild a scare but returns in victory over Oilers

EDMONTON, ALBERTA – The belief ‘As Kirill Kaprizov goes, so do the Wild’ has taken on a whole new meaning.

After Kaprizov left the action following a knee-on-knee collision on Thursday night that looked grim based on the pain etched on his face as he lay on the ice, so much instantly became uncertain — from the immediate details like the game and the rest of this road trip to the big-picture implications surrounding the Wild’s season and Kaprizov’s MVP candidacy.

But almost as quickly as the Wild were in limbo, they were back on solid ground.

Only a few minutes after Kaprizov exited late in the second period, he walked back onto the bench just as the Wild scored a much-needed insurance goal to seize control of a wacky battle with the Oilers and prevail 5-3 at Rogers Place for their NHL-leading ninth road victory.

“We got excited again just to see him,” Marcus Foligno said.

With the Wild ahead 3-2 and 4 minutes, 37 seconds left in the second period, Edmonton’s Drake Caggiula collided with Kaprizov near center ice as Kaprizov unleashed the puck into the offensive zone.

“Obviously frustrating seeing that happen,” Marcus Johansson said, “and to us from our angle, it didn’t look like a good hit.”

The winger slowly got up and actually sat on the Wild bench before eventually leaving down the tunnel. Meanwhile, Kaprizov’s linemate Matt Boldy challenged Caggiula to a short-lived fight.

After penalties were assessed, to Boldy and Caggiula for fighting but not to Caggiula for the hit on Kaprizov, play resumed and at 17:02 Ryan Hartman threaded a pass to Frederick Gaudreau for a redirect just as Kaprizov resurfaced.

“You don’t want to see any of your teammates leave,” Gaudreau said. “But a little something extra special for him. He’s the heart and soul of our team. He’s the engine that runs the team.”

Not only did Kaprizov return that period, even dishing out a hit on his first shift back, but he finished the game tied for the league lead in scoring after setting up the Wild’s first goal.

His 34 points are even with Colorado’s Nathan MacKinnon, and Kaprizov’s 11-game point streak on the road is a new franchise record.

“I just feel it was straight in my knee,” Kaprizov said of the play, adding he thought he was OK.

As for the Wild, they have back-to-back victories on this trip, which concludes Saturday at Calgary, and catapulted to second in the NHL at 13-3-3 with 29 points; the 20 they have banked as the away team (9-1-2) is tops in the league.

None of those previous victories looked like this one — and not just because of Kaprizov’s close call.

The Wild trailed only 27 seconds into the first period when Leon Draisaitl’s hurl from inside the Oilers’ blue line clipped Kaprizov’s skate, skidded between multiple players and through goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury’s pads as he attempted to swat the puck away with his stick.

“It was coming, rolling to me, and right in front of my stick it just bounced over,” Fleury said. “It was dumb though. I should have just make sure I stopped it first and make sure I moved it.”

Officially credited as a 134-foot wrister, the goal was the first shot Fleury faced since his last game two weeks earlier, a 5-2 victory at San Jose on Nov. 7, and it came in another milestone appearance for the future Hall of Famer in his final season before retirement: This was Fleury’s 1,030th game, which moved him past Patrick Roy for third all-time among goalies, and he became only the fourth goaltender to make 1,000 starts.

“It can happen to anyone,” Johansson said. “It’s just such a tough bounce. I think it bounced by three guys, so it was something that you almost just laugh off and start over. Stuff like that happens in hockey over a year, and I feel like you laugh it off and Flower did, too.

“He was unbelievable tonight. It was fun to see.”

The Wild appeared to rebound quickly, with Yakov Trenin getting a piece of a Foligno attempt at 2:09, but Edmonton challenged and video review determined Foligno was off-side earlier in the play to overturn what would have been Trenin’s first goal with the team.

“You feel like, ‘OK, what else is going to happen in this game?’” said Foligno, whose two-point effort lifted him to 301 career points. “We just keep working. That’s kind of been the mentality of the season. You put your head down [and] you gotta work and see what happens.”

At 9:56, Boldy (who later required stitches after getting hit by a puck) accepted a Kaprizov pass before capitalizing from the slot for an equalizer that stuck.

Then 3:09 into the second, the Wild snagged their first lead when Foligno put back his own rebound. The Oilers answered back by 6:03 on another fortuitous goal for them, a wrap-around by Corey Perry that deflected in off Wild captain Jared Spurgeon’s skate.

But the Wild were all business the rest of the way.

“We know what we can do in here, and we’ve built up that confidence, too, that we feel like we can win any game,” Johansson said. “We proved that tonight.”

Johansson polished off another Hartman feed at 9:10 before not one but two buffer builders from Gaudreau, who also had an assist on Foligno’s goal for a three-point night that tied his career high.

After his goal just as Kaprizov returned, Gaudreau tallied a second 9:50 into the third period against Edmonton goalie Stuart Skinner (21 saves). Gaudreau has 12 points over his last 11 games.

“It comes and goes in a season,” Gaudreau said. “It’s not everybody’s that’s going to score at the same time every game. It comes and goes. Yeah, it’s fun to be able to rely on many people.”

BOXSCORE: Wild 5, Edmonton 3

Despite a difficult start, Fleury won his fourth consecutive game after stopping 28 shots.

He gave up just one more goal, a backhander by Jeff Skinner with 25 seconds to go in the game.

Neither power play was a factor, with the Wild going 0-for-1 and the Oilers 0-for-2.

But with the Wild receiving timely goals from three lines at 5-on-5, a wash in the special-teams showdown worked just fine for them.

Draisaitl and Connor McDavid, Kaprizov’s usual company in the NHL scoring race, combined for just two points, with McDavid picking up an assist on Draisaitl’s seeing-eye goal.

“The mental maturity that we’re now starting to show,” coach John Hynes said, “that focus, how to play with the lead, what happens when bad things happen in the game, the discipline within your structure, the penalty discipline, all those types of little things I think are becoming more and more automatic within the group.”