Middling Wild continues to tread water, and frustration has officially set in

It was crystal clear after tonight's 3-2 overtime loss to Boston that frustration is consuming the Wild locker room.

It has been crawling along for a month now, painstakingly chasing eighth in the conference from the outside just like it chases most hockey games.

It has been a month now since the Wild has won consecutive games. Tonight, it lost consecutive games for the first time since Nov. 8 and 11 and is a mediocre 5-5-2 in its past 12 and a yucky 2-2-2 in its past six at home. I think that's the definition of middling.

Zach Parise, who has voiced anger lately with the way the team has lacked excitement in its game, could barely get words out after the game. His simple message was the Wild needs to stop losing.

Jason Pominville talked about a lack of confidence inside the team and frustration, which coach Mike Yeo actually first mentioned before the game when he discussed just how hard it has been for the Wild to get any kind of traction.

Tonight, the Wild dominated the second period but fired 20 shots and still couldn't beat backup Niklas Svedberg. It couldn't score on Grade A chances, breakaways, crashes of the net and players hit three posts. In the third, the Wild rallied on a Pominville lucky goal, finally getting the puck luck it so lacked in the first two periods.

An atrocious overtime followed, the Wild couldn't win a draw, spent 90 seconds in its zone and Loui Eriksson ended things.

"It's a fine line even for us as a staff right now," Yeo said. "Normally what you do is you look at that game and you say, 'If we play that way you're going to get rewarded,' and that's what you focus on. And obviously we know that we need wins, so it's tough. Like I said, it's a fine line between trying to find positives and trying to build our game to try to build our confidence and to build the feeling, that winning attitude feeling, between also not being satisfied, not accepting losing and not getting the end result that we want. So we have to try to walk that line."

Told how players in the room said they're lacking confidence, Yeo said, "There's no doubt. 100 percent it is. And it's easy to say we're big boys; we've got to toughen up. Like I said, that's the line that we have to walk as a staff, that we have to find that right balance. We can't just sit here and feel sorry for ourselves that we didn't win that hockey game. We did a lot of good things. Well, if it wasn't enough, we're better than that. Let's be even better next game. We did a lot of good things. We hit three posts. We made a play to tie up the game. But we can still do a little bit more, and that has to be our mindset. If we keep doing that, I've seen many stretches like this in the past where, you know what, you play good hockey, not great hockey, you play good hockey but don't get the result that you want, the next game you come back a little bit better, the next game you come back a little bit better and before you know it you get on a roll. And that has to be what we understand right now.

"The balance right now that we have to find, and hopefully a couple days in between games will be good here, there's part of it where we have to push through that and we'll earn our confidence. It's not just going to magically appear for us, but at the same time we have to look at the things we're doing well. We have to concentrate on those and we have to figure out what we're not doing well enough and get rid of those things. That's how we're going to get better."

One thing the Wild's not doing well are power plays in clutch situations, like tonight's 1:13 5-on-3 in which Parise, Pominville, Ryan Suter, Mikko Koivu and Mikael Granlund managed one shot, lots of attempts blocked and one blown attempted backdoor pass in which Koivu didn't shoot despite half the net open.

The three lefty setup down low to me seems ridiculous and Pominville said the Wild was also caught off guard by the Bruins' 3-on-5 setup.

Yeo said, "I didn't like out 5-on-3. We scored the game before (he's talking the Anaheim 5-on-3 goal) and we came back and I thought we had a different mindset to this one. It's not a personnel question, it's not an x's and o's thing. It's just the mentality that we went out with."

Yeah, but it's the same personnel coming out with this supposed mentality, so…

As for the Bruins' apparent strange PK, Yeo said, "They played it a little bit differently. They played it a little bit high, but I think there were shooting lanes there and I didn't think our net front was good enough. Bottom line is, where you can outnumber them the most is around the net, and I didn't think that we took advantage of that."

Like I said, this was a game the Wild played well for the most part. The second, the Bruins couldn't come close to contain Minnesota and the Bruins admitted how the Wild took it to them.

But, when you're 5-5-2 in the past 12 and absolutely average lately at home, almost isn't good enough when you're on the outside looking in and there's obviously problems surrounding this team right now.

The Wild is off Thursday and practice Friday in preparation for Saturday's game against the Preds. Matt Cooke should return that night, which could give the Wild a much needed energy buzz.

Maybe Darcy Kuemper will be healthy by then, too. Jared Spurgeon did come back from that stomach bug tonight.

I am out of town this weekend. Rachel Blount will cover Friday's practice, Saturday's game and Sunday's outdoor practice at the Roseville OVAL. Hey, when you're a team that's had the mumps and now a stomach virus, they'll definitely avoid pneumonia, right?

Right?