Wild Scoring Woes

ST. PAUL — The boos started early. And they came late, too.

No, not “booze,” although that was perhaps a pregame (and postgame) focus for many Minnesota Wild fans taking part in St. Patrick’s Day weekend festivities on West Seventh Street in downtown St. Paul.

First, fans directed boos at the scoreboard Saturday when the starting lineup for the visiting St. Louis Blues was announced, notably when former Wild defenseman Ryan Suter’s name came up. Then Wild fans – among the 800th sellout crowd at Xcel Energy Center – let the boos rain down when the Blues went up 3-0 on the Wild in the second period.

The Wild got on the board 25 seconds later, but it was an overall lackluster and sloppy effort from Minnesota as it fell 5-1. The loss dropped the Wild to 1-2-1 on this seven-game homestand and 3-6-1 in the last 10 games.

March Madness? More like March Sadness for Wild fans this season.  

“We definitely need more jam in our game, especially at this time of year,” said defenseman Jake Middleton, who scored the Wild’s lone goal Saturday. “We were just kind of waiting, I thought.”

Waiting for a hero to save them? No, Chad Kroeger. Middleton said they’re waiting for the next guy on the team to score. But it takes a team effort.

The Wild are obviously missing its superstar Kirill Kaprizov, who’s played only three games since Dec. 23 and is out for an unknown timetable with a lower-body injury that required surgery. Jonas Brodin and Joel Eriksson Ek are out injured, too.

“The guys we got in the lineup, we just got to figure out a way to bring it every night and compete,” Middleton said. “I think we have more than we had tonight.”

But in its most grueling part of the schedule late in the season, the Wild are floundering and failing to put pucks in the net. Getting a goal a game as a team isn’t going to cut it (that 1-0 victory, no doubt a solid win, March 2 in Boston aside).

Next man up?
Earlier in the season, the Wild preached the cliché of a “next-man-up mentality” when they were consistently shorthanded in the lineup because of injuries. They’ve had their fair share up and down the roster since October. For a while, the Wild weathered that storm by getting wins, points and goal production from guys not named Kaprizov.

It’s just not happening lately. In six of the last 10 games, the Wild have scored only one goal through regulation time. They’re 2-4 in those games. There’s the 1-0 victory against the Bruins and a 2-1 shootout victory against Colorado on March 11.

The Wild had to rally for a pair of third-period goals Thursday against the New York Rangers, or it would have been four consecutive games with just one goal. That Rangers prevailed 3-2 in overtime. Marcus Johnasson scored in that game, marking his first goal since Jan. 7. The Wild played strong defensively in that game, leading coach John Hynes to give his players credit in his postgame comments Thursday.

“I think we’re playing extremely hard and strong attention to detail, playing the way you really need to win this time of year there,” Hynes said, after the loss to the Rangers. “They’re highly competitive games.”

Top-line drought
But despite the playoff-type atmosphere that some of these games take on, there are other goal droughts on the team. Matt Boldy and Mats Zuccarello have played on the first line with center Marco Rossi. They’re just not producing.

Boldy hasn’t scored since just after the break in the Feb. 22 game at Detroit, a 4-3 overtime victory for the Wild. That’s zero goals in 10 games for him, and only five assists. He still leads the team this season with 21 goals and 55 points.  

Rossi’s goal drought pushed to nine games after Saturday, with only three assists in that span. He had the overtime winner in Detroit in that Feb. 22 game. The Wild had just 18 shots on goal Saturday, one each for Boldy and Rossi.

Zuccarello snapped a 10-game goalless streak with a goal Feb. 28 at Colorado. He has three goals and two assists across his last eight games.

“That’s no secret that we’re struggling to score goals as of late,” Zuccarello said. “We got to find a way to do it. They score on their chances, and we don’t.”

Zuccarello also acknowledged that losing 5-1 at home is not acceptable, adding “everyone in here knows it’s embarrassing for us to play like that, but what are we going to say? You’ve got to take it on the chin right now, and it’s not good enough.”

The Wild have consistently been a better road team this season, going just 15-15-2 at home. They’ve had some rough losses, lopsided ones, on home ice this season. A 7-1 loss to Edmonton on Dec. 12 that started a five-game homestand. A 6-1 loss to Florida later in that same home stretch. Another 6-1 loss vs. Colorado on Jan. 9.

The 5-1 loss Saturday could be added to the list, though this one comes when the Wild are playing nearly every other day throughout a busy month of March.

“It’s a competitive time of the year,” Hynes said. “Tonight, I thought there (were) some certain circumstances in the game where I think our attention to detail wasn’t where it needed to be.

“We didn’t have it tonight. … We’re in a tight race. Our team reacts, responds, works, competes all the time.”

The Wild have 79 points and are still in the first Wild Card spot for the postseason.

The Wild have another shot to right the ship, which keeps taking on water at Xcel Energy center this season, on Monday when Los Angeles visits.

“We’ve got to continue to have the belief that it’ll come,” said defenseman Zach Bogosian. “You know, we’ve had our share of looks in these past few games. Unfortunately, they’re not going in right now. But we have to continue to keep directing pucks at their net and you know eventually they’ll go in.”