The goals were coming, the Minnesota Wild were rolling, but suddenly, the momentum seemed to leave.
It wasn’t having Joel Eriksson Ek's potential second goal the game nullified by offsides— although being up 3-0 after the first period would have set the tone for the following 40 minutes — instead, that tone was set by a Ryan Hartman slashing call 25 seconds after the no-goal call.
For the NHL’s 10th most penalized team in the regular season, the Hartman slash, followed by tripping calls against Ian Cole and Kirill Kaprizov, put a cap on a brutal second period that saw the Vegas Golden Knights put up 36 shot attempts to their own 15, via NaturalStatTrick.