Minus-1 on special teams, failed power play yet again costly for the Wild in Tampa Bay

Part of the maturation of the Wild the past year or so has been coach Mike Yeo putting the young guys out on the ice in more significant roles, like in the final minute in Philly on Thursday when Jason Zucker scored the winning goal or protecting the lead in the final minute Nov. 15 in Dallas when Yeo tossed Zucker, Charlie Coyle and Mikael Granlund on the ice.

In fact, after that game, Yeo admonished the media that they're no longer "young guys," that they're members of the team.

Fair enough, but the one area where Yeo typically defers to the same vets over and over again with the game on the line is on the power play. And over and over again, and not just this season, the same vets haven't gotten it done.

Now it's easier said than done for a coach to NOT throw a Mikko Koivu on the ice or a Thomas Vanek or a Ryan Suter or a Jason Pominville in that situation. It's certainly easier to say, "Do it," from the press box or from your couch at home than if you're standing in Mike Yeo's shoes.

And if Yeo didn't throw those guys out tonight with the game on the line with 1:17 left and on a 6-on-4 against the Tampa Bay Lightning, if Yeo went with other personnel and they didn't score, it'd be easy Monday morning quarterbacking, too, to question the decision.

But there may have to come a point (and very soon) where Yeo says, "You know what, we're 1 for 38 on the power play on the road (2.6 percent!) and 6 for 62 on the power play overall (9.6 percent), so enough is enough."

Tonight, with 1:17 left and the Wild searching for the tying goal, Yeo put out his usual cast of Zach Parise, Koivu, Vanek, Pominville and Suter, and playmaker Mikael Granlund. The Wild failed to score on a third power play of the game, registering one shot, a couple near misses on goalmouth scrums and a whole lot of passing.

So that is why they're out there.

But of the six players Yeo sent on the ice to tie the game, the only one who has even scored a power-play goal this season is Vanek, and as we have seen, he seems to no longer want to shoot. He had no shots again tonight and has one goal and 35 shots in 19 games. We know Granlund loves to pass and Koivu rarely shoots on the power play.

So there was a big passing mentality on the ice that last 77 seconds. In the meantime, left on the bench was the team's hottest goal scorer and leading goal scorer Nino Niederreiter, who has scored four of his nine goals on the power play, Coyle and defensemen Marco Scandella and Jared Spurgeon, who have both played well lately and have shooting mentalities.

"There's a lot of guys that are there based on what they've done in the past, and every coach is going to operate like that," Yeo said. "But it comes to the point that what you've done also involves this season, too.

"We've probably tried nine, 10 different forwards on the power play and different D pairings. We have to find something that clicks here. It's tough to keep switching every game, but we've got to find something here."

But Parise said the theme of the power play all season has been "a lot of sitting around and waiting for someone else to do something. We don't support each other very well. When you're scoring, you do that stuff naturally. When you're not, we stand around, we look at each other, we don't support each other, we don't retrieve pucks. I don't think that was so much the case tonight, but that's kind of been a theme for us for a long time."

The Wild played an even game with the Lightning, which has scored the most goals in the league. It jumped out to a 1-0 lead on Parise's seventh when Vanek set him up for a layup … after not even considering shooting. Still, great play for Vanek's team-leading 10th assist.

The Wild had an 8-1 shot lead in the period but still was passing up shots. The most blatant was when Coyle picked off a puck and the Wild didn't even get a shot off because Granlund and Vanek tried to force passes to Coyle.

In the third, there was a 2-on-1 with Zucker and Vanek and Zucker deferred to Vanek and the pass was turned over.

"For a team that hasn't scored a lot of goals on the road, we seem to be willing to pass up opportunities to shoot a puck on a scoring chance," Yeo said. "I can count at least four times where we were in a prime scoring area and we deferred and tried to make a prettier play instead of shooting the puck."

The Lightning had the Wild on the ropes the rest of the period and after Granlund and Pominville lost a board battle and Parise blew the zone (he took responsibility for the "mistake" afterward), Alex Killorn deflected Anton Stralman's shot for the go-ahead goal and eventual winner. Stralman was awesome again tonight just like he was in that 7-2 loss in Minnesota.

The Wild pushed hard in the third, but by then, Ben Bishop was dialed in.

"We played with that desperation that you'd love to see all game," Parise said.

Pominville sustained a pretty gruesome injury tonight. With 30 seconds left in the first period, he got hit on the right ear by the puck. The puck sliced open the cartilage on top completely, so they needed to sew both sides to stitch it back together. He returned to the game about six or seven minutes into the second and said afterward he's fine.