Marco Rossi had three assists and Joel Eriksson Ek scored for the Wild (28-17-4), who have lost their past two games and five of six. Marc-Andre Fleury made 24 saves.
“Winning simple is hard,” Minnesota coach John Hynes said. “You gotta choose your hard, right? And right now we’re not choosing our hard the right way, and it’s costing us games.”
Minnesota scored three goals in the third period in an attempt to climb back from a 4-1 deficit.
Frederick Gaudreau cut it to 4-2 with a power-play goal on the rebound at 14:15 of the third period.
Kuzmenko responded 14 seconds later at 14:29 with a wraparound goal to make it 5-2.
Marcus Foligno came up the slot for a rebound goal at 18:46 to make it 5-3, and with Fleury pulled for the extra attacker, Mats Zuccarello made it 5-4 with 27 seconds remaining in regulation.
“Everybody cares,” Fleury said. “Everybody wants to win. Everybody wants to do well. It is frustrating that we’re struggling here at home in front of our fans. Yeah, I think sometimes you want to keep it simple. We had a good talk before this game to play like a road game, get the tempo, don’t need to make anything fancy or cute, just play hard hockey. If we keep doing this, we’ll have different results.”
Each team only had five shots in the first period.
Kuzmenko made it 1-0 with three seconds left on the power play at 6:58 of the first period, deflecting in a Kadri pass in the slot.
"I see the big space for me,” Kuzmenko said. “I think I need a little bit go down and say, 'Kadri, pass, pass, pass, pass, please pass.' He pass it to me and I like it. It's a good goal. ... It was a good moment."
Eriksson Ek tied it 1-1 with a wrist shot from the top of the slot at 9:34.
