Luck may be changing, but Wild’s miserable start to season continues

Brock Faber missed the net and not by a little.

The shot he took sent the puck flying over Winnipeg goaltender Connor Hellebuyck and smacking so hard into the boards that it pinballed back where it came from.

Then Hellebuyck beat the Wild defenseman to the puck, but the goalie nudged it into his empty net with his left pad as he scrambled to get back in his crease.

“I don’t think I’ll ever see one like that again,” mused Faber. “But it feels good to get a bounce.”

The Wild’s seasonlong slide continued, their 4-3 overtime loss to the Jets on Tuesday at Grand Casino Arena the fourth consecutive game they’ve gone without a win. But they finally got to feel what it’s like to have some peculiar plays and close calls work in their favor instead of against them.

And in a sluggish start like this where the Wild have just three wins in 11 games, any improvement is a positive sign.

“Moral victories don’t mean much these days,” defenseman Jake Middleton said. “But, yeah, we thought we deserved a better fate.”

After the Jets opened the scoring on a net-side bat out of midair by Gabriel Vilardi, Neal Pionk’s shot was headed wide of the net until it banked off his teammate Vladislav Namestnikov and past Wild goalie Filip Gustavsson.

“Two goals early like that, fluky ones, could absolutely get down on ourselves,” Middleton said.

But the Wild didn’t.

In the second period, a shot from captain Jared Spurgeon stayed loose in the Winnipeg crease, teeing off a frenzied free-for-all in front of a turned-around Hellebuyck before Kirill Kaprizov poked the puck into the Winnipeg net.

The Jets could have challenged the goal for two reasons: Matt Boldy elevated his stick to try to get a piece of Spurgeon’s airborne rebound, and Winnipeg could have checked to see if Boldy’s stick connected with the puck above the crossbar. Whether or not Hellebuyck was interfered with could also have been up for review. But the Jets didn’t contest, and so began the Wild’s latest rally.

“Man, we got right up to the end of it, and it was a tough one. At the end of the day, the puck was laying there, and I think there was some contact. But I don’t know if we could have found it quick enough to make that call.”

Then came Faber’s odd-looking goal, but the finish — like Kaprizov’s — was earned. Same with Marcus Johansson’s third-period tally, which gave the Wild a 3-2 lead before Winnipeg rallied. On a power play, Johansson got on the end of a Faber rebound before it caromed in off a Winnipeg defender.

After being too perimeter in recent losses, the Wild attacked the middle of the ice, and that’s why the puck was there to hit traffic.

“From an offensive perspective, it was direct,” coach John Hynes said. “We were at the net. We were on the inside. I think when you look at how we scored goals and the other opportunities, that’s more indicative of what’s going to give you a chance to win more nights.”

Still, the Wild weren’t unscathed.

But after an own goal and tough break in overtime stung them one game earlier when they fell 6-5 to San Jose, a different script looked like progress for the Wild.

“When you get in these little funks, right, sometimes you don’t just come right out of it,” Hynes said. “There’s a process to get out of it. There’s a style of game. There’s a dig factor. There’s a diligence to your game that you need to have. Then you climb, and you play well.