Penalties hurt Wild in shutout loss to Ottawa

OTTAWA – The common complaint among old-school hockey fans in Minnesota is that there's not enough toughness on the Wild and that players rarely defend teammates after they get run.

Maybe fair, maybe unfair for a team that certainly lacks ruggedness and is built more on speed and finesse.

Thursday night at Canadian Tire Centre, Marco Scandella obliged the old-schoolers. The horse of a defenseman, who has been so good this season, stood up for Jason Pominville after the veteran was nailed by a check early in the second period.

Maybe it was commendable, but the Wild, already dressing an inexperienced blue line with Jared Spurgeon hurt, lost Scandella for 17 minutes because of what referees deemed instigating a fight. The Ottawa Senators capitalized by turning a scoreless tie into a 2-0 lead in a jiffy before skating to a 3-0 victory.

"Just saw Pommer get hit and thought I'd jump in there," Scandella said of challenging Mark Borowiecki. "That's what happens. I don't know if it should have been an instigator. I felt like we both wanted to go. But the call was made."

In the first of what is an indeterminate amount of games without leading scorer Zach Parise, the Wild controlled the 5-on-5 play and outshot the Senators 35-17 but again failed to get two points. It was shut out for the first time this season.

Most frustratingly, despite great looks, the Wild couldn't beat Craig Anderson in the same second period in which the Senators scored twice in 2 minutes, 24 seconds. Overall, Anderson made 35 saves for his 28th career shutout.

With Parise lost, the Wild badly needs its depth to step up. Thomas Vanek (one goal) had seven shots after four in the previous seven games. Mikko Koivu (three points) had six. Neither could beat Anderson, and the Wild's youngsters Charlie Coyle, Mikael Granlund, Nino Niederreiter and Erik Haula all lacked what Granlund called that "last push. We weren't quite there."

"There are some guys that are going right now and there are some other guys that can give us more," Yeo said. "There are some guys that are kind of doing the minimum, like playing the system. That's expected of everybody, but then you've got to bring a little something extra on top of that, and I think that's one thing missing."

At the 14-minute mark of the period, the Wild had eight second-period shots and Anderson made eight saves. The Senators took two shots and beat Niklas Backstrom on both. Down 2-0, Matt Dumba also rang the crossbar on a power-play chance and a driving Jason Zucker hit the near post despite a wide-open net.

"It's one of those ones you wonder how it doesn't go in," Zucker said. "We had plenty of opportunities to score."

The Wild played a solid road period in the first, particularly in holding Ottawa to no shots on consecutive power plays, and outplayed the Senators in the second.

But that middle period got off to an awful start when Borowiecki hit Pominville at the blue line. Pominville tried to avoid the check, and when he cut back, their knees clanked. Scandella skated at Borowiecki in response.

Yeo felt Borowiecki could have been called for kneeing or charging. Also, typically a player either has to jump another or drop his gloves first after challenging an unwilling combatant to get tagged with an instigator. Yeo felt Borowiecki dropped the gloves first. Veteran referees Dave Jackson and Dan O'Halloran disagreed, giving Scandella two, five and 10.

"He's trying to do the right thing," Yeo said of Scandella. "That was the key moment of the game."

Sure was. With Scandella in the box, the Senators took advantage of Nate Prosser and Christian Folin on Clarke MacCarthur's goalmouth tap-in. Two shifts later, Backstrom gave up a bad goal — the first of two Mike Hoffman goals.

The Wild, without Parise, Spurgeon and Matt Cooke, looks to stop its two-game slide Saturday in Montreal.

"The results will come when we get everybody going the right way," Yeo said.