They say U.S. Thanksgiving is when you can really start paying attention to the standings, so if that's the case, the Wild fell into the second wildcard spot and is close to falling outside that playoff threshold after tonight's 3-2 overtime loss to the Dallas Stars.
The point in the standings is better than nothing, but again, just not good enough from the Wild.
Too many passengers and not a well-executed game, especially before Nino Niederreiter tied the score at 1-1 with 2:38 left in the second period on a power play.
"One of these days we'll have all 20 of our guys playing at the top of their game at the same time," coach Bruce Boudreau said. "I don't know if we can wait for that, but it's got to happen."
The Wild's game got better after Niederreiter's goal, which came off a Mikael Granlund feed (Mikko Koivu also got his 400th career assist) and after a Granlund drawn penalty on a shift where the Wild finally forechecked the heck out of the puck, especially Tyler Graovac.
They didn't yield after Brett Ritchie scored 1:01 into the third, with Niederreiter winning a board battle and Erik Haula fishing a puck out and centering for Jason Pominville, the often-snakebit winger who believe it or not clanked the right post, then the left from point-blank range.
But Niederreiter and Haula crashed, and Haula got credit for a goal that he said probably would have gone in on Niederreiter's initial shot.
The Haula goal, plus two huge kills when the power-play-less Stars predictably got two in a row less than three minutes apart got the Wild into OT.