Continued: Careless mistakes cost Wild on road

ANAHEIM, CALIF. - There was no way to blame Wednesday night on a team in transition being unable to rid itself of old habits.

No, with the Wild still looking like it was on vacation after three off-days in California, Minnesota forgot about fundamentals during another careless first period and an eventual 3-2 loss to the Anaheim Ducks at the Honda Center.

Once again digging itself an early hole, the Wild, which lost Martin Havlat in the third period because of a groin injury, overlooked hockey tips taught in childhood -- for example, not going for a line change when the puck is on your side of the red line.

A lack of defensive regard in the first 20 minutes led to the Wild dropping a third consecutive game with back-to-back upcoming games Friday and Saturday in Edmonton and Vancouver.

"What bothers me is just the lack of compete," coach Todd Richards said. "I told the guys, we're not going to be the most skilled team. ... Our identity has to be how we work and how we compete. And if we're going to get efforts like that in the first period, we might be in for a long season."

What's worse, with the Wild already missing injured forwards Pierre-Marc Bouchard, Petr Sykora and Cal Clutterbuck, now the team's most talented scorer is hurt. Havlat, a minus-2 with one shot at the time, is day-to-day.

Anaheim's Corey Perry scored twice, White Bear Lake's Ryan Carter scored the eventual winner and Jonas Hiller made 32 saves as the Ducks repaid the Wild for last week's third-period, three-goal comeback.

That improbable victory is the only reason the Wild isn't 0-5 this morning.

"I need to create the urgency and the desperation," Richards promised.

One would think the 15th-place team in the West, now 1-4, would be desperate, but the Wild found itself trailing less than two minutes into the game after handing Perry a breakaway. The play was so fundamentally inept, the three forwards who got minuses weren't even on the ice five seconds before.

With the puck not even across the red line, the Wild casually went for a line change as Nick Boynton backhanded the puck toward the Wild blue line.

"It's just a race for the puck, a battle really, and I lost the battle," said Kyle Brodziak, who blamed himself for not poking the puck by Boynton.

When defenseman Shane Hnidy tried to play the puck, he couldn't, then wound up flat-footed as Perry flew in on Niklas Backstrom.

Perry suavely faked to his right before sweeping a backhand to the left of a fooled Backstrom.

"When you're coming off in a situation like that where it's a 50-50 puck, well, it's selfish," Richards said. "I mean, you're coming off the ice. Really what you're doing is putting your teammates in a tough position."

After the Wild amazingly didn't give up a shorthanded goal on an unsightly power play, Perry scored again.

Richards scrambled up the lines in the second, and the Wild responded with an inspired effort. But with the Wild outshooting Anaheim 10-1 at the time, the Wild's power play ruined the momentum. The Wild lost faceoffs and puck battles and wound up scrambling from there.

"Every time we got on a power play, we couldn't do a thing," Richards said.

Carter made it 3-0 before Eric Belanger scored late in the second and Andrew Brunette scored with nine seconds left.

"It's tough to come from behind every night," Backstrom said. "It's like after two, three goals, we kind of relax and play better. The second period is how we need to play in the beginning. And if it's not enough, it's not enough, but it's stupid to keep losing like this by giving all the keys to them."