Ref apologized to Wild's Brodin after blown call leads to Seattle goal

The Minnesota Wild are 1-0-1 after two games but they can argue that they'd be 2-0 if it weren't for a highly questionable penalty call that led to a key goal in Seattle's come-from-behind win Saturday night in St. Paul.

The Wild were leading 2-1 in the second period when a crushing sequence occurred in the span of eight seconds. First, Joel Eriksson Ek was knocked out the game by an unpenalized elbow to the face. Eight seconds later the refs whistled Jonas Brodin for tripping when it was clearly inadvertent contact.

Brodin said afterward that the ref who called the penalty wound up apologizing to him. That penalty put the Kraken on the power play and one minute into the man advantage they scored to tie the game at 2-2.

"I talked to him after and he said sorry. He said he saw the wrong stick," Brodin said. "That happens, you know? You make mistakes, but unfortunately they scored."

Michael Russo, the longtime Wild beat reporter for The Athletic, spoke to Minnesota's Marcus Foligno after the game and Foligno called it a "terrible" scenario to have the bad call happen immediately after Eriksson Ek was injured by an elbow to the face.

"Terrible. It’s just tough because it’s common sense, right?" Foligno said, per Russo. "Brodin's got the puck, making a move, and the guy goes to hit him and — yeah, it’s brutal. I mean, I don’t really understand that call at all. It’s tough, right, because then they score on it. Swing of momentum that shouldn’t have had momentum at all, but those are the bounces in the game you just forget about. I think our team did a pretty good job mentally just forgetting about things."

In the end, the Wild regained leads of 3-2 and 4-3 but Seattle answered each time and wound up winning 5-4 in a shootout.

Minnesota is now off to Winnipeg for a game Sunday at 5 p.m. CT. It's the start of a seven-game road trip that will keep them away from home until Nov. 1, and they will not have Eriksson Ek available for the start of the trip.

It's unclear how much time Eriksson Ek could miss.