Bruce Boudreau urging Wild players to 'learn from your mistakes'

The thought might have been tempting for Wild coach Bruce Boudreau.

His team is in the middle of a slump, having lost eight of its past 10 games. After Thursday's 3-1 loss to Philadelphia, Boudreau bemoaned his team's lack of energy and jump.

So maybe he was tempted to take the video of that game and burn it, looking ahead rather that back. Only one problem.

"By burning it, you're sort of trying to forget what happened," Boudreau said Friday. "I think you have to learn from your mistakes. We watched a lot of it today."

Know this: Boudreau is tiring of the whole fatigue thing. He pushed back hard on that Thursday. Still, with back-to-back matinees scheduled for the weekend, starting with Saturday's game with Vancouver at Xcel Energy Center, he had the players sit and watch a video double-feature, then had a (very) optional skate.

That double feature? The horror that was Thursday's loss, and the feel-good story of a Wild game from December. It was Boudreau's attempt to show the team what it is capable of.

"We went back today and looked at a game when we were in the midst of playing really good," he said. "And looked at what we did, and how we were successful. And, hopefully, it will transfer into tomorrow's game."

As for his so-called tired team? Boudreau kind of bristled at the suggestion.

"Look, we have two forwards who play 19-plus minutes a game," he said. "And a forward that plays 17 minutes a game. If we're tired then we're not the athletes I think they are. We're not in the condition I think we should be."

Mikko Koivu is averaging 19:14 of playing time, tops among Wild forwards. Mikael Granlund is at 18:58, Eric Staal 18:41.

The Wild players also deflected questions of fatigue.

"There are lots of teams dealing with schedule things," Staal said. "At the same time, we need to be better. We have to play better than we have been. Our team is pace and aggressiveness. When we're on, we create loose pucks and we get them."

"When we're on top of our game we're really simplified," Boudreau said. "We get it out, we get it in; we're not trying to be fancy."

Boudreau said he thinks a stretch of games when goals came easily got the Wild out of that game.

"All of a sudden we're trying to be really cute with the puck," he said. "It's almost hard to think of getting back to just dumping it out and dumping it in and waiting for other teams to make mistakes, and forcing mistakes with a forecheck. That's what we have to get back to."

But, ultimately, it's up to the players to find the energy that is necessary, Boudreau said.

"Coaches can yell, they can cajole, they can pat on the back, they can kick in the butt. But, in the end, we don't go out there and skate."