Nikita Kucherov ended it in overtime, and the Tampa Bay Lightning walked out of Grand Casino Arena with a 4-3 comeback win over the Minnesota Wild on Saturday.
Kucherov finished the rally at 3:23 of OT on the power play, snapping a wrist shot from the slot past Calvin Pickard on the glove side. He also picked up an assist as Tampa Bay erased a two-goal deficit and kept rolling with its third straight win.
The finish came after Charle-Edouard D’Astous tied the game 3-3 at 16:29 of the third period, scoring on a 6-on-4 power-play chance with Dennis Hildeby pulled for the extra attacker. Tampa Bay had taken a timeout eight seconds earlier before the offensive-zone face-off.
“Just keep pushing, even though they scored the third goal,” D’Astous said of the message during the timeout. “I think we were the best team on the ice. We just keep playing our way.”
Jake Guentzel drove the Lightning offense with two goals and an assist, while D’Astous added two assists. Brayden Point had two assists to move past 700 career NHL points, and Hildeby stopped 19 shots as Tampa Bay improved to 11-3-2 and stretched its point streak to six games at 4-0-2.
Minnesota got two goals from Maxim Shabanov and one from Blake Coleman, but the Wild couldn’t finish off a second straight night after beating the San Jose Sharks 4-1 on Friday. Pickard made 30 saves as the Wild moved to 12-3-4 and extended their point streak to eight games at 6-0-2.
The opening minutes belonged to Minnesota. Coleman put the Wild up 1-0 just 55 seconds in, skating into the zone and wiring a wrist shot into the corner of the far post. Shabanov made it 2-0 at 2:58 with a power-play backhand in front.
Tampa Bay’s response started to build from there, and both Jon Cooper and Guentzel pointed to the line of Jeffrey Viel, Conor Geekie and Scott Sabourin as the group that helped flip the game’s energy. Sabourin led all players with five hits and fought Marcus Foligno in the first period, while Viel added four hits.
“When they started going in that first period, I think our team kind of jumped onboard,” Cooper said. “I’ve got to give those guys a ton of credit.”
Guentzel cut the lead to 2-1 late in the second period, scoring with 22 seconds left on a four-minute power play by putting a slap shot under Pickard’s glove.
“It’s not the way we want to start, but stayed with it,” Guentzel said of falling behind 2-0 early. “Can’t get too down.
A lot of hockey left. So, I thought we pushed back.
It’s obviously nice to get the win.”
Shabanov answered again in the third, pushing Minnesota ahead 3-1 at 6:49 when he moved up ice, beat the defense and slipped a wrist shot five-hole. Guentzel then trimmed it to 3-2 at 13:44 by tipping Point’s shot in front before D’Astous forced overtime.
Cooper called the comeback a “character win,” pointing to the early mistakes that put Tampa Bay in the hole.
“There’s a lot of wins in different ways during the year, but this was a bit more of a character win for us,” Tampa Bay coach Jon Cooper said. “We had that terrible first two minutes, now we’re down 2-0, on just mental mistakes.
I was a little frustrated with that. But I thought the next 58, we gamed it out.
“We saved the goals for late, but I thought the way we played before that, I mean, we were bound to score. I just liked the fact that the guys kept believing.”
Hynes said he liked the way his club competed in a game that felt heavy from start to finish.
“I thought the effort was great,” Wild coach John Hynes said. “It was a highly contested battle.
Kind of a heavyweight fight tonight. I think two teams have played really hard.
I liked our compete level and how we worked and things like that. Back-to-back nights and two real quality competitive efforts for us.”
Kucherov’s overtime winner also moved him into a tie with Martin St. Louis for the third-most OT goals in Lightning history with 10, behind Steven Stamkos (13) and Brayden Point (12). Tampa Bay’s comeback was its first third-period, multigoal rally to win since Nov. 19, 2024, when it beat the Pittsburgh Penguins 3-2 in overtime.
Point’s two assists also tied St. Louis as the third-fastest Lightning player to reach 700 career points.
For Minnesota, Kirill Kaprizov, Quinn Hughes and Joel Eriksson Ek all extended their point streaks to eight games. Kaprizov and Eriksson Ek also tied Marco Rossi’s seven-game run in 2025-26 for the second-longest season-opening home point streak in Wild history, behind Mats Zuccarello’s 11-game stretch in 2023-24.
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