After a bleak October, Minnesota treated November as a dawning of a new year, going 11-1-2. They have a chance to surge in the standings in early December.
Unfortunately for the Wild, the calendar is changing.
After a bleak 3-6-3 October, they treated a new month like the dawning of a new year, with resolutions that fixed all that was ailing them.
Poor defense?
How about not one but two airtight goaltenders? And a revitalized penalty kill to boot?
A timid offense?
Not anymore with the third-best finisher in the NHL and another 15-goal getter on a separate line.
Constantly chasing the game?
That’s tough to do when scoring first and never trailing.
As such, it was a November to remember for the Wild, even after they followed up their signature victory of the season over first-place Colorado with a shootout loss to 29th-place Buffalo that cost them their season-high seven-game win streak.
“Anyone can beat anyone on any given night,” coach John Hynes said, “and that’s why it’s the hardest league in the world.”
Maybe this reminder came at just the right time for the Wild.
They have a make-hay road trip on deck because all four teams they’ll face, beginning with Edmonton on Tuesday, are below them in the standings.
But if they’re going to play like it’s November in December, they’ll have to choose consistency against all their competition.
“Every night is hard,” Hynes explained. “But it’s understanding what your game is and putting that same game on the ice night in and night out to truly win regularly over the course of a season. So, to me it’s the mindset of just what happened the last 48 hours: You play a hard-fought game. You come back out, [and] you have a different opponent that’s not a division rival.
“I thought we were ready to play the game, but we just didn’t have enough throughout the 60 minutes of sustaining that to give us the chance to be able to win the game.”
Fortunately for the Wild, they’ve proven they do know what works for them and how to stick to it, and this light bulb went off after an identity crisis.
What the Wild are now is the opposite of what they were then: During their sputter of a start, they were in a vicious cycle of getting down, ditching their details to try to catch up and then falling further behind. And because they couldn’t outscore their problems, breakthroughs were few and far between.
But after they finished October on a five-game losing streak, they went 11-1-2 in November while giving up the second-fewest goals in the league — a crackdown that included going four games without getting scored on at 5-on-5.
The penalty kill is over 90% in those 14 games after being an NHL-worst 60%, and goaltenders Filip Gustavsson and rookie Jesper Wallstedt have formed a rotation that produced four shutouts in a seven-game stretch.
“We’ll continue to move forward [with it] as long as they continue to play the way they’re playing,” Hynes said.
As for the once-glitchy offense, it was rebooted by the return of Mats Zuccarello after injury shielded the playmaker from those October struggles.
With Zuccarello back, Kirill Kaprizov has been his most dynamic, netting nine of his 17 goals since the two were reunited. Their chemistry brought much-needed balance to the lineup, with Matt Boldy another threat alongside Joel Eriksson Ek and Marcus Johansson; Boldy has 10 of his 15 goals in only his last 12 games.
Overall, the Wild went a franchise-record 12 games with the first goal and were ahead or tied in eight consecutive games.
“We’ve always had confidence in this group, and knew what we were capable of,” Boldy said. “So, for us to go through a little adversity and be able to find it speaks to the group.”
Losing is hard but so is winning.
“You feel good when you’re winning, and you kind of have to let it go,” Gustavsson said, “because it’s a new game and [you have to] reset for that one. That can be hard.”
“But that’s the challenge in this league over a six-month period,” Nico Sturm explained, “to reset no matter if you win or lose and come ready to play next game as if nothing happened.”
So, as commendable as it was for the Wild to defeat the Avalanche 3-2 in a shootout on Friday, being as effective Saturday against the Sabres would have been impressive, too.
Instead, being on the other side of a 3-2 shootout showed that just because the Wild have more than made up for their early-season plummet doesn’t mean they’re done improving.
“I don’t think anyone in here is satisfied with the wins we have,” Gustavsson said. “We just want to win more.”
Steven Stamkos scored on a redirect in overtime to beat the Wild, whose next game at Grand Casino Arena comes Jan. 10.
