Basics aren't enough to end slide

NASHVILLE - There were stretches Wednesday night -- a lot of them, actually -- where the Wild resembled again the Wild of November.

It worked hard. It paid attention to details. It was sound in its own end. It got pucks north with speed. It forechecked the rubber out of that puck.

Yet, in the end, the Wild still lost -- eight games in a row and counting, only this time it at least snagged a point in the standings thanks to Dany Heatley's late goal against the Nashville Predators.

"That's the shootout for you," coach Mike Yeo, trying to pick up the spirit of his downtrodden team after a 2-1 shootout loss, said. "You play a great game and you leave here with an empty feeling. But the reality is if we focus on the game and what we did out there, if we play like that, we're going to be in good shape.

"That's what we have to put in our head."

When you're 0-5-3 since Dec. 10, when you've scored 10 times in that stretch, moral victories are easier to accept. That's how the Wild painted Wednesday's outcome.

Colin Wilson's goal won the shootout, after Matt Cullen and Pierre-Marc Bouchard lost pucks and Pekka Rinne stoned Mikko Koivu.

But with 3:59 left, Heatley found a loose puck from a Nate Prosser shot, wheeled around the net and stuffed a wraparound past the skate of a sprawled, stickless Rinne.

"We just stuck with it," Heatley said. "He made some saves that very easily could have been goals. We could easily have had three or four on him."

The Wild outshot the Predators 35-25, including 11-5 in the second. But Rinne was tremendous until Heatley stopped the goalie's home shutout streak against Minnesota at 159 minutes, 56 seconds.

After Tootoo's goal, Yeo said there was a calm feeling on the bench because the Wild, playing the "right way," believed "the game was ours."

"Heater's goal gives us a little light at the end of the tunnel the way we played tonight," veteran defenseman Greg Zanon said.

The past two weeks have been a grind.

During the Wild's 17-out-of-21 hot streak, on most nights, every line and defense pair played the same shift after shift.

But injuries crippled the Wild, then bad habits slowly crept in as players, such as snakebit Cullen and Kyle Brodziak, tried to compensate. Players began to freelance, and the Wild's game was lost.

With limited practice time lately, Yeo has tried to cram back into his players' minds that they needed to return to playing "Minnesota Wild hockey."

That's chipping pucks behind the defense and going on the attack.

"We worked as hard as we could," defenseman Justin Falk said. "Unfortunately we didn't come out with two points, but we battled like heck to get the one back.