SEATTLE —They’d toyed with danger all night against a team they knew better than to take for granted.

But when the Sounders needed a goal to remain in first place, they had a difference-maker on the field in Clint Dempsey, who wasn’t around for last year’s stretch run. It was Dempsey deciding this Sunday-night thriller with a penalty-shot goal in the dying seconds of extra time for a 2-1 victory over Minnesota United FC that extends the Sounders’ unbeaten stretch to a record-tying nine games.

More important than matching the club record from 2011, the Sounders escaped with a coveted three points to remain tied for the top spot in the Western Conference despite appearing to take the last-place, expansion Minnesota side a little too lightly at times.

“They were compact defensively, they were difficult to break down,” Dempsey, sidelined for the season a year ago this month with an irregular heartbeat, said of a Minnesota side routed by the Sounders two weeks ago. “They defended with a lot of heart, had a lot of great clearances. We just kept plugging away.”

The game was ultimately decided by one final Minnesota clearance attempt that defender Jermaine Taylor inadvertently made with his hand on a scramble in the box with time running out. The whistle blew, Taylor was yellow-carded for the handball and 40,312 fans at CenturyLink Field salivated in anticipation of the Dempsey penalty kick to come.

Dempsey has been on fire, with four goals in his last three games. He rarely misses with the game on the line and didn’t this time, firing a bullet to keeper Bobby Shuttleworth’s left.

Shuttleworth actually guessed correctly on the shot, but Dempsey had enough on it to get it by and help his team improve to 11-7-7.

“I just wanted to get it hard and low,” Dempsey said. “I took it quick to throw him off. I think he thought I was going to hesitate, do the little stutter-step. He still got his hand to it so maybe I didn’t hit it as cleanly as I wanted, but I think taking it quick kind of threw him off a little bit.”

Despite warnings from their coaching staff — and themselves — about taking the so-called “Loons” too lightly, the Sounders appeared caught off guard early. They had numerous lapses and saw their club-record shutout streak ended at 421 minutes when Minnesota newcomer Ethan Finlay split the defense, took a feed from Brazilian midfielder Ibson and beat Stefan Frei to his right in the 21st minute.

Frei said the Sounders were too “mentally casual” at times, including the opening goal when Finlay — acquired this month in a trade from Columbus — waltzed in to the box unchallenged. Two minutes later, the Loons nearly went up 2-0 when striker Abu Danladi shook off his defender and fired a near-post blast beyond Frei and off the side of the net.

“Those are all things, mental lapses that are very frustrating in a game like this,” Frei said. “They didn’t really have anything, but we’re not making the right decisions and essentially it can cost us the game. Thankfully, we were able to mount enough pressure in the last clip of the game; they broke and we’ll take the three points.”

The early lapses were somewhat puzzling from a Sounders team well aware their 4-0 win in Minnesota two weeks prior was unlikely to be repeated. Minnesota’s counterattack had proved difficult in that game and the result might have gone differently if not for some early Frei saves.

After surviving Sunday’s initial blitz, the Sounders eventually improved possession and, in the 31st minute, Chad Marshall put a header on a Nicolas Lodeiro free kick to tie it 1-1 heading into halftime.

“I think after the first sequence … after that first five, six, seven minutes, it finally sunk in to them ‘You know what? We’ve got a game on our hands,’ ” Sounders coach Brian Schmetzer said. “And they were able to score the early goal, which set us back even more. So, you’ve got to credit Minnesota … and we were just fortunate to put enough sustained pressure on them to make them break down at the end.”

The Sounders subbed striker Will Bruin in to the game and also added left back Nouhou in the late-going — enabling them to push Roman Torres further up the field — to help keep that pressure on. Dempsey had a great chance on a 66th-minute header from point-blank range that went straight into Shuttleworth’s arms.

But given another chance from close distance in extra time, Dempsey didn’t miss.