Wild turns in dismal effort vs. Devils during 7-4 shellacking

NEWARK, N.J. – In the middle of a desperate Western Conference playoff race that saw the Colorado Avalanche catapult into the top eight Wednesday night, the Wild picked a terrible time to combine poor goaltending with its worst defensive performance of the season.

Before fans even had a chance to settle into their seats and boo former Devils captain Zach Parise, New Jersey held a two-goal lead before cruising to a 7-4 trouncing of the Wild at Prudential Center.

The Wild dropped its fourth game in the past five (1-3-1) and, most disconcertingly, lacked battle and urgency despite the fact the team is on the outside looking in by one point with 11 games left.

The result was a season-high seven goals allowed to the lowest-scoring team in the NHL.

"I don't have an explanation," Parise said.

"It's game [71]. We have to make sure we battle," added Nino Niederreiter. "We're right in the race for a playoff spot. Games like that can't happen."

The Devils' Devante Smith-Pelly, Adam Henrique and Mike Sislo each scored two goals and the Wild's Devan Dubnyk was pulled from the net for the second time in 11 nights after giving up three first-period goals on eight shots.

"I'll take responsibility for that game getting to where it was," Dubnyk said.

Dubnyk gave up two goals 51 seconds apart in the first 94 seconds of the game. The first by Smith-Pelly came when Dubnyk got caught fallen and swimming in his crease after a missed wraparound.

"There's a loose puck there for three seconds, we've got to get hungrier and box out," interim coach John Torchetti said.

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The second came after Sislo fanned on his initial shot and beat Dubnyk after driving the net alone. Erik Haula overskated the puck, but without naming names, Torchetti pinned the blame on defenseman Jonas Brodin for not taking a hit.

"Everybody's a little tense about the first two," Dubnyk said. "Get a big power-play goal, you don't want to give up the next one. I have to hang onto that rebound and control the game. That's my job back there and I'll need to be better at that next time."

Added Niederreiter, "I was hoping we all wake up and get this thing going. It went totally the other way."

The Wild was a defensive mess in the second period. It constantly got caught on the wrong side of the puck and forced Kuemper into one-on-one situations with shooters. Kuemper gave up three goals in the period all off soft defensive plays and a lack of battle along the wall.

"It just seemed we weren't ourselves," defenseman Ryan Suter said.

Jared Spurgeon did make it 4-1 at one point, but 2½ minutes later, Henrique scored. In the third, Justin Fontaine made it 6-3, but a little more than three minutes later, Henrique scored again.