Recap: Wild lose ugly in Winnipeg

Some games you just want to almost immediately forget about.

So much ink has been spilled as of late about the Minnesota Wild being a potential Cup contender and moving into that upper tier of teams the last couple of weeks, and then they just lay a complete stinker north of the border against the Winnipeg Jets.

We really do not need to take anything away from this game. I’m serious. Just wipe that hour of hockey completely away from your mind. It can simply be summed up as:

• Wild started off well, overcame an initial shot deficit and that led to them scoring the game-opening goal off of the skate of Joel Eriksson Ek.

• Then, just, of course, Mark Scheifele proceeded to score a natural hat trick through the second and the beginning of the third period. Suddenly, after a dogshit second period and 40 minutes of letting the Jets walk all over them as they threw disconnected passes around the ice, they found themselves down 4-1.
• They never recovered. There was no hope for this team to really get back into this one. Not enough time left for even the late-game heroics we have come to know with this team. Even if they cut down the lead to just two goals later via a Mats Zuccarello snapper.

• But, the Jets proceeded to score another one and even a 6-on-5 goal from Dmytri Kulikov couldn’t make us feel better. Wild lose 6-3 in Winnipeg.

I don’t want to make this game seem unimportant, but, please just don’t settle too much on this one. It was weird and we can be certain that Dean Evason and his crew of assistants will be on the players’ asses in the next practice, trying to correct all the mistakes they made.

Kaprizov and Zuccarello were the only Wild players that earned multiple points tonight, if you want to mark down some numbers or whatever.

While the skaters will have a lot of explaining to do, Cam Talbot was near perfect and making the saves that he should have at the beginning of the game. It becomes unraveled later, but I would blame the men in front of the posts instead of the guy in between them.

Overall, it’s just a tough one where things didn’t break right. The disconnections and collapses were annoying, but only two players (Jordie Benn and Dmytri Kulikov) finished with a sub-50 percent on-ice shot attempt share at 5-on-5. The Wild completely controlled the attempts, but just barely scraped by with the overall quality comparatively, with a 53.86 expected goals share at 5-on-5. It was just a matter of getting those Actually Good Scoring Chances instead of potting them towards Connor Hellebuyck from afar.

Like, this just tells you about everything you need to know.

At least there’s a tight turnaround and the Wild are in action on Friday as they face the top-tier Florida Panthers in St. Paul. I’m sure nothing will go wrong facing a very, very good team.

Burning Questions

Can Boldy continue to drive the secondary scoring?

Boldy was fine! He made his typical strong plays with possession, kept scoring chances active in the offensive zone, but just wasn’t able to get any points. That was restricted to the other top guys. He still got a couple of shots on net, seven shot attempts (most on the Wild), and two scoring chances. Boldy was active, but just didn’t produce.