ST. PAUL, Minn. — Kyle Okposo scored twice midway through the third period, and the Islanders overcame a three-goal deficit to beat the Wild 5-4 on Sunday night.
John Tavares, Cal Clutterbuck and Thomas Hickey also scored for the Islanders, who won for the third time in eight games.
Tavares rejoined the lineup one night after sitting out a home game against New Jersey because of an undisclosed lower-body injury.
Ryan Suter, Jonas Brodin, Nino Niederreiter and Justin Fontaine had goals for the Wild, who have lost five straight and eight of 11.
“We just kept chipping away and kept chipping away,” Okposo said. “We were down 3-0, and kind of regrouped. We decided to go after them and start moving our feet.
“For the first 22 minutes we weren’t doing that, so we decided to get pucks deep and go to the net.”
The Islanders didn’t play a complete game, either, but they were good enough.
Okposo’s second goal capped a wild 2-minute span in which the Islanders took the lead, lost it, and regained it.
Okposo, who played 1 ¹/₂ seasons at the University of Minnesota, scored the winner with 5:48 to play when he raced in from the left wall and put in a rebound after Thomas Vanek was stopped by Josh Harding.
The goal came 27 seconds after Fontaine lifted a rebound over Isles goalie Kevin Poulin to tie it 4-4. Okposo had given the Islanders a 4-3 lead 92 seconds earlier when his slap shot beat Harding low on the glove side.
With the Islanders trailing 3-0 midway through the second period, Tavares took a shot from the right edge of the crease that hit Koivu’s skate. The Islanders captain reached in and poked the puck across the line.
Clutterbuck, traded for Niederreiter on June 30, tipped in a shot from Hickey late in the period to get the Islanders within one goal.
Hickey tied it at 6:30 of the third, cutting across the crease to tip a pass from Colin McDonald high into the Wild net.
“We’ve had our struggles, and they’re a good hockey team, they’re going to get through it,” said Islanders coach Jack Capuano, whose team lost 10 straight from Nov. 19 to Dec. 9. “We didn’t talk anything about what they’ve done or their record. We just wanted to keep applying the pressure to them.”