Mandatory Credit: Matt Blewett-USA TODAY Sports - Wild's penalty kill allows five goals in 8-3 loss to Stars at homeMandatory Credit: Matt Blewett-USA TODAY Sports - Wild's penalty kill allows five goals in 8-3 loss to Stars at home

ST. PAUL — The Minnesota Wild’s alarming patterns continue and their season has hit rock bottom with their latest loss Sunday topping the rest.

Sluggish starts. Poor special teams. Turnovers. Top players not showing up.

Those all applied in the Wild's latest loss, a 8-3 defeat to the Dallas Stars inside Xcel Energy Center in their first divisional matchup of the season.

“It’s hard to digest,” head coach Dean Evason said. “The scary part is we were still in the hockey game at 4-2. That’s the scary part because we were awful, like awful. I’m sure you guys have talked about the turnovers. ... It’s funny because the bench is like, ‘Stop turning it over. Stop turning it over.’ Then the guy who’s saying, ‘Stop turning it over’ goes out and turns it over.”

What is especially concerning about Sunday night is not the loss itself, but how it happened. The Wild allowed seven special teams goals, surrendering a franchise-worst five power play markers in addition to two shorthanded goals.

“We shoot ourselves in the foot being in the box that many times,” said Wild captain Jared Spurgeon, who was in his second game back from injury.

“But when you’re in the box, you still have to kill a penalty — whether it’s blocking a shot or just making a play to get the puck out. Things that can be fixed, but we have to look in the mirror a little bit here (and) see what we’re doing and go from there.”

The Wild’s penalty kill officially went 3-for-8, but in reality, their lone third-period penalty was their only successful two-minute kill Sunday night.

Jason Robertson earned a roughing minor with five minutes left in the second, which negated the final 37 seconds of the Stars’ power play. The Wild also were credited with a kill on Brandon Duhaime’s 5-minute major and game misconduct for boarding in the second period where they allowed two goals.

The loss mirrored the Wild’s first round exit to the Stars back in April where their penalty kill went 9-for-24 and finished with the second-worst playoff penalty kill at 62.5 percent.

The Wild are slightly above that — one percent — in the first 15 games this season, sporting the NHL’s worst penalty kill at 63.5 percent. The Wild’s power play hasn’t been much better, though, at 17.5 percent. Minnesota has scored just six times on its last 44 power play opportunities over 12 games since Oct. 19 — a measly 13.6 percent.

Special teams have been letting the Wild down early, and Sunday was no different as the early season trends continued.

The Wild allowed the first goal 57 seconds into the game on the penalty kill. Miro Heiskanen’s point shot trickled past Marc-Andre Fleury (eight goals allowed on 37 shots), and Joe Pavelski somehow got lost in defensive coverage in front of the net, found the loose puck and buried it for the Stars first of five power play goals.

“A lot of them are rebound goals that they’re just finding and hungrier than we are to get it out of there,” Evason said. “You’re standing beside someone and he out wills you to put it in the net. It’s hard to go ‘Geez, you’re out of position.’ You’re not. You’re just out battled. We need more from a lot of guys.”

Marcus Foligno added: “We (have) got to get stronger in front of the net, in front of (Fleury) — and just be a lot tougher to play against.”

Then the Wild turned it over in their own zone on the power play, resulting in a Grade-A shorthanded scoring chance in the slot for Radek Faska, who beat Fleury five-hole to give Dallas a two-goal lead midway through the first.

14 seconds after Duhaime cut the Wild’s deficit in half, Matt Duchene made Minnesota pay for allowing him to easily get net front position, where he then redirected Mason Marchment’s pass from the corner to restore their two-goal lead.

“It’s just ugly,” Foligno said of chasing early in the game again. “It’s just a negative way to start a game.”

It would be the Stars’ only even-strength goal of the night — but that didn’t matter even though the Wild got themselves back within one in the final minute of the first when Vinni Lettieri made it 3-2 with his shot from the right circle beating Jake Oettinger short side.

Wyatt Johnston and Evgenii Dadonov’s second-period power play markers gave Dallas a 5-2 lead, a deficit that proved too high for the Wild. Johnston completed a tic-tac-toe passing sequence when his shot from the edge of the right circle beat Fleury blocker side, and Dadonov later found Johnston’s rebound and tucked it home from the blue paint.

Mats Zuccarello’s power play goal with 48 seconds left in the second made it 5-3, but the Wild allowed two more power play goals and a shorthanded marker in the third period. Robertson scored the two man advantage markers, the first one from in front of the net and the other one on a one-timer from the point.

Fleury stopped Tyler Seguin and Johnston’s second-period breakaways, but Johnston didn’t miss again when he got another breakaway try in the third while shorthanded with 2:03 left to make it an 8-3 game.

“We need more from a lot of guys. I’m not going to call out a lot of guys in front of you guys, but there’s some guys that sucked tonight,” Evason said. … “We get paid a lot of money to coach, to play, that you gotta get the job done. 

"You get paid to score goals — score goals. … We just talked about it. You look at our board and if you go top-six, bottom-six forwards, most of the bottom-six forwards are getting it done. ... We do need more from our top guys.”

The Wild are now 5-8-2 and sit sixth in the Central Division, but the Nashville Predators (5-9; 10 points) and the Chicago Blackhawks (5-8; 10 points) below them have one and two games in hand, respectively. Meanwhile the Stars (10-3-1) hold the top spot in the Central.

“We can complain and get angry and do all that stuff, but that’s not going to help us,” Foligno said. “We like to think that we’re an experienced group and can get out of this. There’s a time and place for getting angry, but yeah, we’re angry. We’re not happy with what’s going on.”

The Wild head to Sweden this week on a three-game losing streak and with losses in nine of their past 12 games. The Wild face the Ottawa Senators Saturday morning and the Toronto Maple Leafs Sunday morning.

“No matter where you’re going, if it was Sweden or another city, it’s the same thing,” Spurgeon said. “We gotta work our way out of it.”

All statistics courtesy of NHL.com and Natural Stat Trick

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