Postgame: Wild loses a precious, much-needed point, regulation win in Ottawa

This is going to gloss over some stuff that went missing in the game and be pretty quick because I'm way out at the arena right now, which is a ways away from my hotel, which is a ways away from the airport, where my 6 a.m. flight awaits.

So please give the game story and the game notebook a read on startribune.com/wild as well.

But if the Wild misses the playoffs because it ends up tied with the Avalanche in points, look back to tonight's 3-2 overtime loss at Ottawa and the other 10 OT/shootout losses this season. The Wild fell to 2-11 in OT/shootouts this season, but most importantly, 1-9 in the OT portion.

Why's that key? Because if the Wild and Avs tie in points at the end of the year, regulation/overtime wins is the first tiebreaker.

Tonight, if the Wild could have held off the Senators for eight measly more seconds, the Wild not only would have a two-point lead on the ninth-place Avs, they would be tied with 32 regulation/overtime wins.

Why is having one less regulation/overtime win huge? Because the next tiebreaker is greater number of points earned between the tied clubs, which the Wild has locked up going into the final meeting. The Wild actually has 7 points to Colorado's 2, but because the Wild will have played more games in Colorado, believe it or not the come-from-behind win opening night would be thrown out because the first game played in the city that had the extra home game is excluded. However, the Wild still has a 5-2 points advantage going into the last game in Denver March 26.

Instead, the Wild got a one-point lead going into the Avs' game at Vancouver on Wednesday, but it remains one regulation/overtime win behind the Avs.

But with an extra attacker on, Erik Karlsson's shot took a funky hop off the dasher and caromed right back into the slot. Michael Stone put it back on net and with Mikko Koivu, Jared Spurgeon and Ryan Suter in the vicinity, the puck landed right on the stick of Mika Zibanejad. He buried it to force in overtime.

In overtime, Koivu took his second bad tripping penalty in less than nine minutes. The Wild killed the 4-on-3 power play, but with the 3-on-3 now 4-on-4 with Koivu out of the box, Charlie Coyle didn't get a puck deep, the Senators rushed the other way, and Coyle, Zach Parise, Ryan Suter and Marco Scandella all began to scramble and finally Karlsson, one of the most dynamic defensemen in the NHL, capped his three-point game with the winner.

It's a shame because late in regulation, Spurgeon could have been the hero of the game by blocking four shots on a single penalty kill. He first may have robbed a Zack Smith goal, then threw his body into three Zibanejad slap shots before temporarily hobbling off the ice.

"Part of the penalty kill, you've got to get in the lanes. It just happened to be mine three times," he said.

He said two got him in the same area, one on the other side: "Just part of the game," he said.

You can read the other quotes on Spurgeon's, let's call it, gutsiness in the game, but Torchetti said, "The whole team was spurred from it. I thought the emotion would carry us through there."

The Wild, which had power-play goals in 13 straight road games, went 0 for 3 with two shots on them. It had three in a row in the second, two with a chance to make its one-goal lead two, one with a chance to get its one-goal lead back after Mike Hoffman beat Devan Dubnyk with a bad goal.

But Ryan Carter made it 2-1 coming out of the box and deflecting Mikael Granlund's shot past Craig Anderson.

"It's tough. So close, play a decent game and we don't take care of things the last 10 seconds," Coyle said.

"It's definitely difficult," Carter said. "An Eastern Conference team, you've got to regroup yourself and say it doesn't matter. We just have to win that game, it doesn't matter how, 'lets get two points and go.'"