from Michael Russo of Russo's Rants,

Seventy-one games in, the Wild’s season is quickly ticking away and tonight in Newark, the Wild got smoked, 7-4.

The seven goals allowed were a season-high for the Wild and one from equaling the most allowed in a game in history.

In the heart of a playoff race, the Wild is 1-3-1 in its past five and somehow lacked battle and compete along the wall and any sense of urgency despite being one point back of Colorado for the eighth and final playoff spot.

Maybe it was just the natural sag or the wind being taken out of its sail, like Ryan Suter said, from being down 2-zip just 94 seconds into the game, but regardless of the reason, the Wild can’t afford that at this point and, as Nino Niederreiter said, games like that can’t happen.

There’s no doubt Devan Dubnyk needs to be better, but the second period was a train wreck defensively. The Wild was on the wrong side of the puck countless times and basically didn’t follow the system by going into an aggressive forecheck according to coach John Torchetti. Players were soft along the wall, soft on pucks, soft with their positioning. They were beaten to loose pucks, beaten to wall battles like they didn’t want to battle at all.

It was a disappointing game toward the tail end a disappointing season because regardless of the outcome this season – playoffs or not, it was not supposed to be this way for the Wild.

read on

Game highlights are below...