The Wild wanted a hot start to take the home-town crowd out of Friday night's Stanley Cup playoff game early.
What they got was startling even to them.
Jordan Greenway scored 39 seconds after the opening face-off, and Kirill Kaprizov added another goal less than two minutes later, and the Wild were on their way to a 5-1 win in St. Louis that gave them a two games-to-one lead over the Blues in their Stanley Cup playoff series.
The Wild have won two in a row after falling to the Blues in the opener.
They are the first two wins of the season by the Wild over St. Louis, who took all three regular-season matchups.
"It's big to go out and not allow them to get momentum from their crowd," said Greenway, who scored the quickest goal in Wild playoff history. "I don't think I came out planning to score as quickly as we did, but we definately wanted to go out there and attack them as much as we can.
Marc-Andre Fleury stopped 29 shots, Joel Eriksson Ek had a goal and an assist, and Mats Zuccarello and Jonas Brodin also scored as the Wild improved to 8-8 all-time in Game 3s.
“I think it was definitely deflating for us, but we’re a veteran team and we should’ve responded better,” Blues forward Ryan O’Reilly said of the two early goals. “Bounces are going to happen. We came out with great energy, feeding off the building, and I thought we did some great things well, but maybe got too excited offensively. We’ve got to be responsible and then build our game from there.”
Game 4 of the best-of-seven series is Sunday afternoon in St. Louis before shifting back to St. Paul, Minnesota, for Game 5.
St. Louis defenseman Colton Parayko was caught chipping in the offensive zone creating a 2-on-1 break resulting in Greenway’s goal 39 seconds in.
“I just thought we simplified it,” Wild coach Dean Evason said. “I mean, we weren’t trying to go east-west. We were just getting pucks into the zone and skating and that’s the game right and you know, everybody talks about our team being a physical team, but we can skate.”
Less than two minutes later, Ryan Hartman sprung Kaprizov on a breakaway. Husso made the initial save, steering the rebound to the corner, but Kaprizov banked the rebound off Husso’s skate from behind the net to give the Wild a 2-0 lead.
“He’s one of those players that finds a way to score from everywhere and it’s nothing new for us,” Zuccarello said. “It’s good to see. You work hard and you get the bonuses and today we got bounces.”
Zuccarello’s 16th career playoff goal gave the Wild a 3-0 lead in the second period and Eriksson Ek scored his third goal of the series 22 seconds into the third period. Marcus Foligno picked up his second assist of the game on Eriksson Ek’s tally.
“Smart plays, getting pucks out, having the third guy high, coming back hard, back-checking, it’s easier to get those chances,” Zuccarello said. “I think the whole team today tracking back, the back-checking, was phenomenal.”
Brodin’s goal with 7:29 left prompted a significant portion of the sellout crowd to head for the exits.
“We knew they’re going to be aggressive obviously and you know we did some really good things as far as getting pucks into the neutral zone and then use our speed from there to get up the ice,” Evason said.
The Associated Press contributed content to this article