Flat Wild bumbles, tumbles vs. Penguins

High-energy, up-tempo, fast.

That had been the Wild's identity the season's first 10 games, but Tuesday night, the high-powered Pittsburgh Penguins made the Wild look sluggish, sloppy and slow during the first two periods of a 4-1 Minnesota loss at Xcel Energy Center.

The troubles were evident early. In the first 2 ½ minutes, the Wild committed several turnovers and iced the puck three times. It was a sign of things to come. The Wild executed poorly for 40 minutes and for the first time this season couldn't play "fast hockey" because of difficulty getting through the neutral zone.

"There was definitely a lot of frustration," said Nino Niederreiter, who in the second period cracked his stick over the bench and slammed the door in anger after fouling up two offensive rushes.

"It just seemed really tough to try to build any kind of momentum," coach Mike Yeo added.

What's worse, the Wild, already without injured Jared Spurgeon and Matt Cooke, played the third period without leading scorer Zach Parise because of an upper-body injury. Yeo didn't reveal the seriousness or indicate if Parise would be able to accompany the team to Ottawa for the start of a road trip Wednesday.

Asked if it's serious, Yeo said, "I sure hope not," adding he hoped to provide an update Wednesday.

In the meantime, the Wild was handed its first home loss by an Eastern Conference contender that had scored 18 unanswered goals in 205-plus minutes before Niederreiter's shorthanded breakaway goal — the first shortie of his career — in the third period.

The Wild, trailing 3-0 after two periods, pushed hard the final 20 minutes, outshot the Penguins 15-5 and thought its deficit was cut to 3-2 with 3:06 left.

With Mikko Koivu jamming at the net, referee Francois St. Laurent signaled no goal. The NHL's Situation Room initiated a review because one of Koivu's shots crossed the goal line and was punched out by Marcel Goc. But after two minutes, St. Laurent announced amid loud boos that the play the league just spent so much time reviewing was actually non-reviewable because he initially ruled incidental contact with goalie Thomas Greiss.

Mikael Granlund was indeed on top of Greiss when the puck crossed, although he was pushed onto him by Kris Letang and Paul Martin.

"It's too bad," defenseman Ryan Suter said. "It would have been interesting."

The Wild outshot the Penguins 34-22, but even Jason Pominville said it didn't feel like that, especially in the first two periods. The Wild (22 goals in the previous five games) never got into a rhythm and committed several turnovers, especially from Thomas Vanek (minus-2) and Matt Dumba (minus-3).

"We took for granted just being at home," Suter said. "We've had a lot of success here, and we just came out flat and we thought we just had to show up to get the win."

Penguins captain Sidney Crosby was held to two shots, but the Wild couldn't contain Wild killers such as Nick Spaling, who has six goals in 15 games against the Wild, and the Penguins' vaunted power play.

The Penguins have 19 power-play goals this season. That's 17 more than the Wild, which went 0-for-4. It took Evgeni Malkin 11 seconds into one power play to set up Chris Kunitz for a 3-0 Pittsburgh lead. That extended Malkin's season-long point streak to 11 games.

Darcy Kuemper made his first career start against the Penguins and was 53 seconds from getting out of the first period scoreless until mishaps from Dumba and Vanek resulted in an easy goal for Spaling.

The second period, usually the Wild's go-to segment (it has outscored opponents 17-7), resulted in two more Penguins' goals. The dagger came after another Vanek turnover and Brandon Sutter chipping a puck by Nate Prosser for an odd-man rush.

"At the end of the day, it's our fault," Niederreiter said. "We should have come out for 60 minutes. We only showed up for 20."