Wild struck first but eventually let up six straight goals to now put them eight points behind the Predators in the standings.
NASHVILLE - With a chance to pull themselves within four points of the Nashville Predators, the Wild came out flat. They did not record a shot until a hair over five minutes in.
“Yeah, that’s accurate," Wild head coach John Hynes said on playing soft and a first period perimeter game. "You lost the game on the hard areas of the game, the competitiveness. We talked to the team before the game about the team that’s going to be the most competitive is going to win the hockey game and we certainly were not that tonight.”
Connor Dewar, who scored three goals in this same building in November, opened the scoring for the Wild. It felt like the only good shift the Wild had in the first period.
Maybe in the whole game as well.
Yakov Trenin scored for the Predators under a minute after Dewar's goal to tie it. Cole Smith, the North Dakota Alum and Minnesota native, scored eight seconds later to give the Predators the lead.
The Predators quickly erased the Wild's one goal lead by scoring two goals eight seconds a part and only 49 seconds after Dewar's goal. It was the fastest two goals the Wild have allowed in franchise history.
Trenin's goal came after Roman Josi fired a pass off his skate to his stick and into the net past Filip Gustavsson. Smith's goal came after a neutral zone face-off loss and a mistake by Declan Chisholm. Freddy Gaudreau lost the face-off and had to immediately track back into the defensive zone.
Chisholm regained possession of the puck and tried to feed Gaudreau at the top of the blue line. It went off Gaudreau and bounced onto the stick of Smith who then outmuscled both Chisholm and Jonas Brodin to get to the loose puck before making it a 2-1 game.
"I wouldn't say that was as deflating as that third one," Jake Middleton said on the back-to-back goals. "I mean we were still playing fine. We were in the fight. It happened quick. There was still a lot of time in the game. We knew we were gonna be able to come back from that. The third one was deflating for sure though."
The second period went exactly as you would imagine with lots of pushing and shoving and even a fight. In the middle frame, Michael McCarron and Mats Zuccarello got into a fight but it wasn't the usual fight.
Kirill Kaprizov bumped into Alexandre Carrier after the whistle had blown which started a bit of a line braw. Zuccarello grabbed onto McCarron and the big 6-goot-6 center punched Zuccarello in the face with his glove on.
Both were assessed penalties and not long later, Jake Middleton got hammered into the boards by Jeremy Lauzon and the two eventually dropped the gloves. Middleton landed a few heavy punches on the 6-foot-1 defender and Lauzon went to the locker room with a face full of blood.
"When stuff like that happens, you guys know, you can probably feel the animosity in the press box, right? Whether it slows things down or speed things up, you hope that you come out on the good side of it," Middleton said on his fight.
About 50 seconds later the Wild got another power play down a goal and finished the man advantage without a shot. The Wild had two power play chances in the second period to tie the game but failed to even record a shot.
"Yeah, of course. We try to score every time but we've done a good job of that as of late but today it didn't seem to work," Mats Zuccarello said on not capitalizing on the power plays. "But that's how it goes and we wish in this game we work more than any other game you know, big game for us. But like I said, lot of games left. We can't dig our heads in the sand here. We got to step up and do what we can. We got another important game in a day."
Not long after Filip Forsberg came out of the penalty box the Predators scored. Jake Lucchini fell on top of Tommy Novak just over 30 seconds after the Wild's power play expired, and sent the Predators to the power play.
Not even 40 seconds had passed after the penalty before Forsberg extended the Predators lead to 3-1. His power-play goal deflected off Brodin in front and snuck past Gustavsson.
This eventually turned into a third period ambush when the Predators scored three goals in the third to beat the 6-1 win for their seventh straight victory.
According to Natural Stat Trick, the Predators scored six goals on 2.87 expected and only generated 1.91 expected goals at even-strength play. It wasn't a good game for Filip Gustavsson but as Hynes said, it wasn't a good game by anyone.
“We need our team to be better," Hynes said on Gustavsson not making big saves. "We can slice and dice it all you want but at the end of the day, they were a more competitive team, a harder team in harder areas of the ice, and we were not and that is why the result was what it was tonight.”
Tonight the Wild had an opportunity to get themselves within four points of a playoff spot behind the Predators but instead are now eight points behind Nashville. This was a big game for the Wild but their next game is equally as big.
The St. Louis Blues are 4-5-1 in their last ten games but are one point ahead of the Wild in the standings. Nonetheless, the Wild have only 22 games left in the season so the urgency to win conference games needs to be higher if they want to make the playoffs.
"Yeah, a team can go in a rut and lose four in a row and we can win four in a row," Gustavsson said. "You never know. And that's what's fun. Everyone can win against everyone in this league."
Hynes added: “Yes, tonight was a big game. We didn’t have our best, but I think we’ve had our best, we’ve had a pretty good stretch here 7-2-1. Tonight we’re going to address some areas and we should be a hungrier, harder team coming into Saturday and that’s what we’re going to look forward to doing.”