Golden Knights' Four-Game Win Streak Ends in St. Paul as Wild Strike Three Times in the First Period

By Previously Staff, Previously

October 12, 2026

Three Minnesota goals in 5:07 of the first period put Vegas in a hole it spent all night climbing out of — and the Golden Knights' four-game win streak ended one goal short in St. Paul.

ST. PAUL, Minn. — The Vegas Golden Knights spent four games building the kind of streak that makes a road trip feel manageable, and then they spent a little more than five minutes in Minnesota watching it come apart. The Wild scored three times in a 5:07 span of the first period Monday night at Grand Casino Arena, and that burst was enough to carry Minnesota to a 4-2 win that ended Vegas' four-game winning streak.

Vegas never led. That single fact tells most of the story of the night. The Golden Knights had stretches where they controlled play, they cut a three-goal deficit down to one in the third period, and they pressed late with chances to tie it. But a team that starts a game chasing three goals against an opponent playing as confidently as Minnesota is right now has left itself almost no room for a bad bounce, a missed clear or an empty power play — and Vegas ran into all three.

Five minutes that decided the night

The opening started innocently enough. By defenseman Brayden McNabb's account afterward, Vegas liked its first 10 minutes. The Knights were in the game, the pace was manageable, and nothing about the early going suggested a blowout period was coming. Then Matt Boldy opened the scoring at 11:50 of the first, finishing on his own rebound to give Minnesota a lead it would not give back.

Once the first one went in, the next two arrived quickly. Maxim Shabanov added a power-play goal at 14:32, extending the lead while Vegas was a man short. Less than three minutes later, at 16:57, Danila Yurov made it 3-0, arriving at the back door to finish a feed from Bobby Brink. Rieger Lorenz picked up the secondary assist on the play — the first point of his NHL career, in just his second NHL game. Lorenz, a Minnesota second-round pick in 2022, taken 56th overall, will remember the sequence for a long time. For Vegas, it was the moment a difficult night became an uphill one.

Three goals in 5:07 does not happen because of one mistake. It happens when a team loses momentum in layers — a rebound not cleared, a penalty that puts a dangerous power play on the ice, and then a coverage breakdown at the far post while the building is still buzzing from the previous goal. McNabb's postgame assessment, in essence, was that Vegas cannot afford to go down three to a team like Minnesota, and that managing both the puck and the momentum better is the lesson the Knights have to take out of St. Paul.

A scary moment in the first period

The first period also brought the night's most worrying moment, one that had nothing to do with the score. Wild forward Nico Sturm was struck high by a shot from teammate Jared Spurgeon with 2:14 left in the period. Sturm did not return to the game. Afterward, Minnesota coach John Hynes said Sturm had been taken to a hospital as a precaution, and the team had no further update in the immediate postgame window. Everyone in the building, on both benches, understands how quickly a routine shot can become something far more serious when it catches a player up high, and the hope coming out of Monday is simply that the precaution proves to be exactly that.

Vegas pushes back, but cannot finish the climb

To their credit, the Golden Knights did not fold at 3-0. Rasmus Andersson got Vegas on the board at 2:37 of the second period with a slap shot from the point — his first goal — and the goal changed the temperature of the game. A three-goal deficit can feel final. A two-goal deficit, with more than half the game left, is a working margin, and Vegas played the rest of the night like a team that believed the comeback was available.

That belief grew in the third. William Karlsson cut the lead to 3-2 at 9:25, finishing a 2-on-1 after a saucer pass from Brett Howden set him up. With more than 10 minutes still to play, a one-goal game in a loud building, Vegas had exactly the opening it had been working toward since the first period ended.

What it did not have was a power-play goal to complete it. Vegas went empty with the man advantage on the night, including two chances in the third period when a single conversion would have tied the game. Minnesota's penalty kill finished a perfect 5-for-5, and Vegas coach Ryan Craig credited both the pressure the Wild killers applied and goaltender Jesper Wallstedt for the way those chances were shut down. Aggressive kills are designed to take away time before they take away lanes, and on Monday Vegas repeatedly ran out of the first before it could manufacture the second.

Wallstedt finished with 21 saves for Minnesota. At the other end, Carter Hart made 24 saves for Vegas in a performance that, after the first-period flurry, kept his team close enough for the third-period push to mean something. The final goal did not come against either goaltender in normal play — Joel Eriksson Ek scored into an empty net with 1:22 remaining, restoring the two-goal margin and closing the door Karlsson's goal had opened.

Marner's milestone in a losing night

There was one notable individual mark for Vegas in the loss. Mitch Marner recorded his 60th assist as a Golden Knight, reaching that number faster than any player in franchise history. Milestones that arrive in losses tend to get filed away quietly, and this one will probably be no different in the short term, but it underlines how quickly Marner has become central to the way Vegas creates offense. On a night when the Knights needed one more play on the power play and one more finish at even strength, the absence of that final connection — not a lack of effort — is what separated a comeback story from a 4-2 final.

Where the records stand, and what is next for the blue line

The result leaves Vegas at 5-2-0 on the season, with the four-game winning streak snapped, and moves Minnesota to 4-1-1. One loss in October does not redefine a season, especially a loss built largely on a five-minute stretch, but streaks end for reasons, and the reasons here are fixable and specific: protect the front of the net on rebounds, stay out of the box against a power play in rhythm, and make a penalty kill work harder than Minnesota's had to work on Monday.

Vegas also got difficult news off the ice on Monday. Defenseman Parker Wotherspoon is out week-to-week with an upper-body injury, a development reported the same day as the game. Wotherspoon played Saturday against Los Angeles, logging 19:05 of ice time with three hits and a blocked shot, and he has appeared in six games this season after being acquired from Pittsburgh in the offseason. Any week-to-week absence on the blue line tests a team's depth, its pairings and its penalty kill all at once — three areas that were already under the microscope after Monday night.

The Knights, in other words, leave St. Paul with plenty to correct and no reason to panic. They fell behind by three in five minutes, they climbed back within one, and they had the power plays in the third period to finish the job. That they did not is why the streak is over. That they got that close at all is why nobody in that locker room will treat one bad stretch in Minnesota as anything more than what it was — a hard lesson, delivered early, on a night when five minutes were enough to decide everything.

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