Bryan Rust tied Sunday's Game 3 between his Pittsburgh Penguins and the Columbus Blue Jackets with his second goal of the night, but the equalizer wasn't without concern or controversy.

The goal came about 10 seconds after Columbus defenseman Zach Werenski was cut badly after taking a Phil Kessel shot under his visor.

Play continued as Werenski laid on the ice after absorbing the blow. He left the ice bleeding profusely into a towel as the Penguins were celebrating their goal late in the second period.

He returned in the third wearing a full cage and looking like this:

As far as whether the goal should have counted, NHL on-site officiating supervisor Don Koharski declined to say if allowing play to continue was the correct call, accor

The 19-year-old rookie scored his first career playoff goal in the opening frame.

(Video courtesy: NHL.com)

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The Minnesota Wild are learning the hard way that a hot goalie can steal a series.

One of the top teams through the regular season, including a win streak that saw the team string together 12 straight victories, things haven't run so hot for the Wild in the opening round of the playoffs.

Now down 3-0 to the St. Louis Blues, the Wild have been regularly stymied by Blues netminder Jake Allen, who turned aside 40 shots in Sunday's 3-1 loss. He has allowed just three goals in the series, stopping 114 of the 117 pucks directed toward the St. Louis net.

Wild defenseman Ryan Suter voiced his frustration over his team's inability to regularly put the puck by Allen, telling Michael Russo of the Star Tribute, "We're not playing bad. We just can't score. If we can find a way to score a goal, it's a different game."

Minnesota bench boss Bruce Boudreau agreed with Suter's stance.

"If you're looking for me to criticize our team, it's not going to happen," Boudreau told reporters. "We were friggin' good tonight. We didn't get the breaks, so quit trying to put words in our mouths that make us look like we're bad, because we're not.

"These guys are trying right to the end. They want to win as bad as everybody. They want to bring it home to Minnesota. Right now, it's not working."

The Wild have outshot the Blues throughout the series, 117-78.

Boudreau noted the team's mindset will be to look at Wednesday's contest as a Game 7, as St. Louis now has a stranglehold on the series and another win marks the decisive victory for the Blues.

Four teams have come back from 3-0 series deficits in NHL history, with the most recent coming in 2014, when the Los Angeles Kings stormed back in epic fashion against the San Jose Sharks.

"It's possible. It's been done. It doesn't happen very often, but when you have three games that were as close as ours, it doesn't take a lot to turn it over," Boudreau added. "Our whole goal is just to win Wednesday and we'll be happy for a day."

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There's a reason the St. Louis Blues are staked to a commanding 3-0 series lead over the Minnesota Wild, and it's not the offense.

The Blues have mustered only seven goals in their three first-round playoff games - one of which landed in an empty net Sunday - but it's Jake Allen who deserves the bulk of the credit for putting the Wild's season on the brink.

Allen has stopped 114 of 117 shots in the series so far.

The 26-year-old netminder clearly hasn't been bothered by the heavy workload he's seen in two of the three contests.

"It doesn't matter to me, obviously the more shots the tougher it is, but it doesn't faze me," Allen told FOX Sports Midwest postgame Sunday.

Allen and the Blues will get their first crack at eliminating the Wild on home ice in Game 4 on Wednesday night.

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ST. LOUIS - Jaden Schwartz scored the go-ahead goal in the second period and Jake Allen made 40 saves to lead the St. Louis Blues to a 3-1 win over the Minnesota Wild on Sunday for a 3-0 lead in their first-round playoff series.

Colton Parayko also scored for the Blues and Alexander Steen added an empty-netter for St. Louis, which will try to sweep the series Wednesday night in St. Louis.

Charlie Coyle scored for Minnesota, which got 28 saves from Devan Dubnyk.

Schwartz had a power-play goal at 15:19 of the second period to put the Blues one win away from the second round. He scored with 2:27 left in the third period of Game 2 to give St. Louis the 2-1 win.

Allen was the star of the first two games. He stopped 74 of 76 shots for a .974 save percentage against a Wild team that ranked second in the NHL in scoring during the regular season.

The Blues scored just 3:25 into the first period when Parayko beat Dubnyk high with a shot from the high slot after a nice pass from Patrik Berglund. The goal was the third in 23 playoff games for Parayko, who scored four goals in 81 games this season.

St. Louis out-shot Minnesota 15-9 in the first period, but couldn't build on its early lead. Vladimir Tarasenko and Steen both hit the post.

Minnesota tied it with a goal from Coyle with 7:01 left in the second period. Coyle scored off a rebound of a shot from Zach Parise, giving the Wild their first even-strength goal of the series and Parise his third point in three games.

The Blues scored their first power-play goal of the series from Schwartz with 4:41 remaining in the second period. Schwartz, who took a high stick from Ryan White to earn the penalty, scored his second goal of the series off a pass from Steen behind the net.

Minnesota put 19 shots on goal in the third period, but couldn't beat Allen.

The Wild pulled Dubnyk for an extra attacker with 2:10 remaining and Steen scored his first of the playoffs, assisted by Berglund and Vladimir Sobotka, into the empty net with 1:11 left.

NOTES: The Wild made two lineup changes for Game 3. D Christian Folin was scratched in favor of D Nate Prosser. Folin was minus-2 in the first two games of the series. RW Ryan White made his Wild playoff debut in place of rookie Joel Eriksson Ek. ... Blues C Jori Lehtera was a healthy scratch for the second consecutive game.

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Cam Atkinson wasted little time.

The Columbus Blue Jackets forward put his team on the board just 11 seconds into Game 3 of its opening-round series versus the Pittsburgh Penguins, banging in the rebound after netminder Marc-Andre Fleury turned aside the initial shot from Brandon Dubinsky.

Pittsburgh carried a 2-0 series lead into Sunday's contest.

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Among millions of Maple Leafs fans out there, internet sensation "Dart Guy" may already be the most famous.

The Toronto puckhead watched his Maple Leafs take down the Washington Capitals in a double-overtime thriller in D.C. on Saturday, complete with an Auston Matthews jersey, painted face, dyed beard, and unlit cigarette.

He topped off the look with a shaved design of a Stanley Cup on the top of his head:

Dart Guy's unique appearance made him a hit on social media, where he's enjoyed his 15 minutes of fame:

Best of all? The newfound fame earned Dart Guy, who tweets as @LeafsMaz20, a pair of tickets from the Maple Leafs to Game 3 in Toronto on Monday.

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As NHL playoff hockey returns to Toronto for the first time since 2013, a local boy whose family couldn't afford to attend many games when he was younger will be in the building.

Ditching the Maple Leafs jerseys of his youth, Tom Wilson will try to beat his hometown team as his Washington Capitals attempt to rebound from a double-overtime loss that evened the first-round series at a game apiece. The Capitals' Game 1 overtime hero, the Toronto native is back and ready to be public enemy No. 1 at Air Canada Centre.

''A couple years ago I got booed off the ice at the end of a game in my hometown, so we've crossed that one off the list,'' Wilson said last week. ''I'm going to go out there to play my game and it's going to feel good to beat anyone in the postseason, and obviously pretty cool to go in. The ACC is going to be absolutely electric, and there's no doubt in my mind that that's going to be charged up and fun to play in, and so as a hometown guy it's going to be fun to go back and play there.''

Toronto coach Mike Babcock ruffled some feathers when he pointed out that Wilson is ''not as big of a concern'' as other Capitals players like Alex Ovechkin and Nicklas Backstrom. Wilson agreed with that even after scoring in overtime to win Game 1, but the 23-year-old power forward specializes in getting under the skin of opponents and opposing fans.

''He's probably so excited to go in there and be the villain and just do his thing,'' Capitals winger Brett Connolly said. ''He's a guy who does a lot of dirty work and (plays) a lot of hard minutes and sticks up for his teammates and gets in fights with guys that maybe you don't want to at the time but he's going to do it anyways because he's a good teammate.''

Loved by teammates and despised by opponents, Wilson perhaps fittingly had a Darcy Tucker Maple Leafs jersey as a kid, a nod to the kind of player he has become. It speaks to how rare playoff games in Toronto have been recently that it was only 10 Maple Leafs playoff games ago that Tucker leveled Sami Kapanen in the final game of a 2004 second-round series loss to the Philadelphia Flyers.

Fast forward 13 years to Saturday, and Kapanen's son, Kasperi, scored twice in Game 2, including the winner in the second overtime to send the series across the Canadian border tied at 1. Toronto was always going to be jacked up for the first home game of the playoffs but perhaps even more so now that the Maple Leafs have some serious momentum.

''It'll be a great environment, it'll be a playoff atmosphere,'' Washington coach Barry Trotz said Saturday on a conference call. ''You'll get chills down your spine when you're on the bench for both teams.''

Maple Leafs defenseman Morgan Rielly, who played more than 40 minutes in Game 2 because of the length of the game and the season-ending leg injury to Roman Polak, said ''you can't ask for much more'' than getting a split in Washington and going home. Only five players are left from the last Toronto playoff team that made the playoffs and lost to the Boston Bruins: forwards Nazem Kadri, Tyler Bozak, James van Riemsdyk, and Leo Komarov, and defenseman Jake Gardiner.

It'll be a new experience for Kapanen, Auston Matthews, William Nylander, Zach Hyman, and Mitch Marner, but they got a taste in their playoff clincher against Pittsburgh. Capitals defenseman Brooks Orpik was watching his former Penguins teammates and scouting the Maple Leafs in that one, and he has a good idea what to expect.

''I'm sure they're pretty revved up. They haven't had a playoff game in a while,'' Orpik said. ''We got an experienced team in here. We know what it's like to play on the road in the playoffs. You got to focus on what you can do and play the system that we're supposed to. You can't make mistakes there and give them extra chances to generate energy with the crowd.''

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It's down to a best of five.

Thanks to Kasperi Kapanen's double-overtime winner in Saturday night's thrilling Game 2, the Washington Capitals and Toronto Maple Leafs will shift to the Air Canada Centre with a split.

After two closely contested games to open the first-round series, the top-seeded Capitals appear eager to find their next gear.

"We've been chasing this series a little bit," Caps head coach Barry Trotz told Stephen Whyno of the Associated Press. "It's been a little bit of an uphill battle, so it's been a test."

Trotz added, "They won a game in our building, so the series is on. It's on."

Related: Trotz calls OT win over Leafs 'a really good wake-up call'

Entering the matchup, many expected the Presidents' Trophy winners to have their way with the inexperienced Maple Leafs, but two overtime results later, things don't look so lopsided.

Game 3 is slated for Monday night.

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Chris Kreider set a career high with 28 goals and 53 points this season. When it comes to his performance in the postseason, New York Rangers head coach Alain Vigneault hasn't been so pleased.

"I'm expecting more from him (Kreider)," Vigneault told Sportsnet's Eric Engels. "Up until now he's played two ordinary games."

In the first two games of the Rangers' series against the Montreal Canadiens, Kreider has taken four shots, picked up two penalty minutes, and failed to register a point.

Both the matchup and his personal playoff history suggest Kreider has the potential to make a much bigger impact.

Thanks to deadline additions such as Dwight King, Steve Ott, and Jordie Benn, this Montreal team is built on size and toughness. Kreider's racked up at least 132 hits and 58 penalty minutes in each of the past four seasons, and at 6-foot-3 and 228 pounds, he has the ability to impose his will physically. He also possesses elite speed, which could allow him to get behind the Habs' slow-footed defense corps with regularity.

And Kreider's been a nuisance to the Canadiens in the playoffs before. In Game 1 of the 2014 Eastern Conference Final, this happened:

Carey Price finished the period, but missed the rest of the series. The Rangers went on to the Stanley Cup Final. Price did get his revenge, though:

Kreider has an opportunity for a less ordinary performance in Game 3 on Sunday night at Madison Square Garden.

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The top-seeded Chicago Blackhawks aren't off to a hot start this spring, dropping two home games to open their series against a stifling opponent in the Nashville Predators.

Even worse, the experience-laden Blackhawks' roster is yet to record a goal in the playoffs, losing 1-0 in Game 1, followed up by a 5-0 defeat Saturday at the United Center.

Predictably, head coach Joel Quenneville hasn't liked what he's seen.

"That was frustration to a different level," Quenneville told Mark Lazerus of the Chicago Sun-Times after the loss. "That wasn't fun to watch. We dug ourselves a tremendous hole. Not too many positives came out of tonight's game. Everybody was responsible, from the coaches down to every single player. We need to get out of this mess."

While recovering from such a deficit may be unlikely, a 2-0 hole isn't uncharted territory for the NHL's modern-era dynasty. Under Quenneville's tenure, the Blackhawks have faced the deficit three times, most recently in 2014 versus the St. Louis Blues - a series Chicago won in six games.

Game 3 goes Monday night in Music City.

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