ST. PAUL - Despite losing seven of its last ten games, the Earth isn't falling in the eyes of the Minnesota Wild. Even after one of the most sluggish games of the year, the Wild have to flush a 5-1 loss on home ice to the St. Louis Blues and move on.
It is a quick turnaround with the Los Angeles Kings in town on Monday and you know that Kevin Fiala will be hungry to pounce on the Wild right now, like Jordan Kyrou did on Saturday night.
"You gotta take the lessons quick out of it," Wild head coach John Hynes said. "You gotta get ready for the next game and get going. We got another, a day of rest tomorrow and then we got another big week coming. So, it’s a great time of year. It’s a highly competitive time of year. You can’t get too low when you lose, you can’t get too high when you win. And I think that’s the most important thing.
"Even for you. I think it’s ones where, we don’t, we lose a game and it’s like the earth’s not falling apart. Like we got a really good team. Tonight, we didn’t play our best. There’s a couple areas we could be better at. We will be better, and then we got another swing of games coming up this week. So, we’re excited for that."
One bad game happens. A stretch of two, three, or maybe four bad games happens. But in this current stretch for the Wild, it seems like it's just going to keep happening.
In their first four games of a seven game homestand, the Wild have scored a total of five goals. Two of them have been at 5-on-5 and one of the two was on the heels of the Blues' goaltender Joel Hofer making a poor decision behind the net.
“They scored goals. We don’t. Simple as that," Mats Zuccarello said. "That’s no secret that we’re struggling to score goals as of late. We got a find a way to do it. They score on their chances, and we don’t. They also pinned us in a couple times in our own zone, but I think we had some really good O-zone time, had some great chances, but that’s the difference. They score and we don’t.
"I mean, I can stand here and tell you but at the end of the day if we lose 5-1 at home, it’s not acceptable. Everyone in here knows it’s embarrassing for us to play like that, but what are we going to say? You gotta take it on the chin right now and it’s not good enough. There’s a hungry team coming in here Monday. We gotta be ready to compete and win hockey games.”
The Wild spent most of the first period in their own zone. They allowed chance after chance and were being dominated on possession time, it seemed.
Any chance the Wild would get in the offensive zone, they would fire it over the net. The Wild's fourth line created the most chances in the first period. They had four shot attempts and missed the net on every single one.
Yakov Trenin made two great moves to get to the net in the first period and missed twice. Deadline acquisition Justin Brazeau had a point-blank chance in the slot with no one on him and he fired it 10 feet to the right of Hofer.
To put salt in the wound, Marat Khusnutdinov, who the Wild traded for Brazeau, scored his second goal in as many games with the Boston Bruins.
The tide shifted in the second period though. Or so it seemed. Jake Neighbours opened the scoring in the second and Kyrou scored his first of three goals just over two minutes after Neighbours scored his 17th of the season.
"We just had more, you know? I think that goes back to us reacting like I said. It's like we were just kind of waiting for it and then in the second period, we took it to them and played our game," Jake Middleton said. "Even their goals. It wasn't like we were playing bad. Their goals were, they got lucky bounces. We didn't and that's just the way it's going. We definitely need more jam in our game, especially at this time of year. We were just kind of waiting, I thought."
Middleton got the Wild's lone goal thanks to a mistake by Hofer and the Blues. Kyrou then scored the next two goals to end it for the Wild.
The process to score a goal right now feels like a daunting task. With no Kirill Kaprizov or Joel Eriksson Ek, the Wild simply can't put the puck in the back of the net. It is an exhausting process.
"It's almost like, I agree with you, but it's almost like we're waiting for it. We're waiting for the next guy to do it, the guy beside you," Middleton said. "When we're not scoring as a team we all got to do it together, right? And that was kind of tonight. In recent games, the work ethic is there. But we gotta start stepping up as a team here and put the puck in the back of the net and just (start) playing harder."
In a time where the Wild are, and will continue to be, without Kaprizov and Eriksson Ek, they need guys to step up.
So that being said, it's not a good time for a guy like Matt Boldy to go into a slump. The 23-year-old forward has zero goals in his last ten games. He had three goals in two games before his ten game drought but also went scoreless in nine-straight before the two-game goal streak.
Marco Rossi hasn't scored in nine games. Gustav Nyquist, the Wild's other trade deadline acquisition, has zero goals in seven games with the Wild and zero in his last 17 games with the Nashville Predators and Wild. He has not scored since Jan 25.
He has one 5v5 goal in his last 55 games with six goals in that span. One of them was on the power play and four of them were empty net goals. His last 5v5 goal was Jan 25. His one before that was Oct 28.
Zuccarello has three goals in his last 18 games, Marcus Johansson has one goal in his last 18 games and Ryan Hartman has one goal in his last 14 games.
To Middleton's point, it seems like every Wild player is just sitting on the bench and looking at the guy beside them and hoping they will be the one to score.
That can't keep happening. It isn't like the Wild are a lock for the playoffs. They just dropped a game to the Blues who now entered the wildcard picture, and the schedule the rest of the month for the Wild doesn't get easier.
Minnesota plays the New Jersey Devils twice, the Dallas Stars, Vegas Golden Knights, Washington Capitals, and the Kings to end the month. They have a game against the Buffalo Sabres and Seattle Kraken who both aren't in playoff spots, but neither were the Pittsburgh Penguins or the Blues at the time and the Wild still dropped those.
Nonetheless, the concern level has to be a little bit high. But as Hynes said, the earth isn't falling apart. They still are a good hockey team. This is still the same team that started the season 18-4-4 and was the best team in the league.
They had proven to be the best team in the league at times and stats back that up.
But it is also the team that is 11-14-1 since Jan 8. Which is 29th in the NHL. It's the same team that has scored the fewest goals in the NHL since Jan 8 but also the same team that allowed the fewest goals per game in the NHL through the first 28 games.
It's just a matter of what team will show up for the final 15 games of the season.
“Honestly, everyone wants to go and score goals and win hockey games. No difference in here," Zuccarello said. "Right now the puck doesn’t go in and it’s not a lack of trying or whatever but maybe when you get in a situation a little bit extra poise that you usually have when things go well is not there. Yeah, I don’t know. It’s frustrating for you guys to watch but imagine being out there and feeling the same way and you want to do but it’s no excuses. It’s not good enough. Next game we gotta compete and we gotta show up and be hungry. We gotta bounce back after this.”