Wild's four-game win streak snapped with loss at Tampa Bay

TAMPA, FLA. - The Tampa Bay Lightning has Steven Stamkos. The Wild does not.

That was corroborated in a painful way Saturday night when the Wild held the NHL's best offense to two goals but couldn't stop the NHL's most lethal sniper from turning a game around with a second-period power-play goal en route to an eventual 2-1 win.

The Wild's power play, which has been rubbish all season, went 0-for- 3, fell to 6-for-62 this season and 1-for-38 on the road, including a big time fail in the final 77 seconds when the team's go-to players, yet again, failed to score on a 6-on-4.

Even Zach Parise called it "repetitive."

Coach Mike Yeo put the game in the hands of playmaker Mikael Granlund and veterans Parise (fourth in the NHL last year with 14 power-play goals), Mikko Koivu (franchise-leader 165 power-play points), Thomas Vanek (114 power-play goals), Jason Pominville (223 career goals) and Ryan Suter.

The six players registered one shot. Two pucks trickled by the post and there was an abundance of passing.

Of the six players, Yeo put out there, the only one who has even scored a power-play goal this season is Vanek. Left on the bench was leading goal scorer Nino Niederreiter, who has scored four of his nine goals on the power play, and defensemen Marco Scandella and Jared Spurgeon, who have played well lately and have shooting mentalities.

"There's a lot of guys that are there based on what they've done in the past, and every coach is going to operate like that," Yeo said. "But it comes to the point that what you've done also involves this season, too.

"We've probably tried nine, 10 different forwards on the power play and different D pairings. We have to find something that clicks here."

Yeo felt the late power play was the best of the Wild's three, but "to pass up quality shooting opportunities at that time of the game, we've got to get it to the net."

Overpassing was Yeo's biggest complaint about the Wild, which snapped a four-game win streak, all game. After a sixth consecutive scoreless road first period, the Wild jumped out to a 1-0 lead on Parise's seventh goal and an 8-1 shot lead but couldn't get a second goal past Ben Bishop.

"For a team that hasn't scored a lot of goals on the road, we seem to be willing to pass up opportunities to shoot a puck on a scoring chance," Yeo said.

Even on the Wild's lone goal, Vanek, who has one goal and 35 shots in 19 games, didn't consider shooting despite being alone with Bishop. After Parise forced a turnover and gave him the puck, Vanek set Parise up for a pretty layup.

The Wild was controlling play until a Ryan Carter hooking minor. On the power play, Stamkos capped a 2:19 shift by scoring with 8 seconds left on a power play after Erik Haula, Kyle Brodziak, Suter and Spurgeon were stuck on the ice for 75 seconds.

"We got trapped out there for a long time and just couldn't seem to get off the ice. Next thing you know, he gets the puck in the slot and that's a dangerous area for him," Brodziak said of Stamkos, who is tied for the league lead with 14 goals.

Four minutes later, Granlund and Pominville lost wall battles, Parise blew the zone without the puck coming out and moments later, Alex Killorn deflected Anton Stralman's shot for the eventual winner.

Parise took responsibility and also hammered the Wild's ineffective power play.

"It's a lot of sitting around and waiting for someone else to do something," Parise said. "We don't support each other very well. When you're scoring, you do that stuff naturally. When you're not, we stand around, we look at each other, we don't support each other, we don't retrieve pucks."