Wild plays excellently, maybe its best game all year, yet lose 4-0 to Chicago

APRIL FOOL'S!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm just joshing. They were terrible.

I did get people goooooooodddddd on Twitter tonight when I wrote "Oh my God, Boogaard scores."

I waited a minute and then tweeted, "I'm sorry. My clock is off. April Fool's Day is tomorrow. My bad."

How funny am I? Honestly. What would you do without me?

By the way, the Wild is still not mathematically eliminated thanks to the Colorado Avalanche melting down like a Milky Way bar on the equator.

And no, I'm not being like Lloyd in Dumb & Dumber and saying, "so you're saying there's a chance?"

Actually 5-0 would get it done and nobody getting to 90.

Calgary moved to within two points of the Avs tonight, and they play against each other one more time head-to-head. If Colorado does miss, remember the Wild went 5-1 against them.

The Wild just didn't have it tonight. Fairly good legs early, and then the energy just drained from their bodies. Some bad giveaways. Antti Miettinen's led to the first goal. John Scott's led to the second goal. Mikko Koivu not keeping the puck in led to the third goal. The first three goals were by Chicago's fourth line -- Tomas Kopecky had two and Ben Eager had one and a career-high three points.

Although truth be told, Kopecky would probably be on the Wild's first line. The dude's got talent.

Miettinen was terrible tonight, and he took a swan dive on the knife after the game, saying he was "embarrassed" by the way he played. Lots of others should join him in the shame department.

Although, playing the hindsight game, if I were Todd Richards, I'd second-guess myself by not using leading goal scorer Guillaume Latendresse (who was not very good tonight, but I hear he's not close to 100 percent) and arguably the most talented defenseman -- and a shooter -- Brent Burns.

Maybe it's Monday morning quarterbacking calling for Burns instead of one of the pointmen, Marek Zidlicky or Martin Havlat, but Miettinen? He's not playing well lately, and a 5-on-3 is just too much net for him to shoot at if you know what I mean.

Maybe Latendresse in front of the net, Havlat on the half wall, Burns and Zidlicky at the point and of course, Koivu.

But like I said, it's easy to be a post-game expert when the team didn't score on the 2-man advantage.

Still, on a degree of difficulty meter, Miettinen scores the difficult ones and misses the net or rings the post on the gimmees. So this was just too good of an opportunity for Miettinen to score in. Hey, and I like Miettinen as a player. I'm just sayin'.

It's been outshot 220-140 in the past seven games.

Center Kyle Brodziak said of tonight's game: "There's no way to make an excuse for it. It just wasn't good enough. Forget about it. Take some more pride in the way we play. Come back to the rink tomorrow and make sure we're ready to work. That's the way it should be every day. Today we weren't ready to work and it showed."

The Blackhawks, who had lost seven of 10, snapped a three-game losing streak with the victory. They now hope the Wild provided the same antidote it injected into struggling San Jose a few weeks back when the Sharks came to Minnesota losers of five in a row. Prior to Wednesday's game against Dallas, the Sharks had won four in a row.

Some other odds and ends that might have gotten trimmed from today's story:

Wild draft picks Marco Scandella and Darcy Kuemper signed amateur tryout agreements and played for the Houston Aeros against the Chicago Wolves Wednesday night. Incidentally, that was a 4-0 loss too, so not a good night for Minnesota affiliates franchises vs. professional hockey teams from Chicago.

Not good. He'll have a better idea Monday about what course of action is ahead and how long he'll be out.

OK, I'm outta here. Rachel Blount not only has Thursday's practice, she's covering Friday's game against San Jose as I work ahead on stuff for the weekend and next week's end-of-the-year stories. There is a chance you don't hear from me again on the blog until after Sunday's morning skates in Vancouver because I'm traveling to Vancouver Saturday and won't be at the Wild's practice.