With season on the brink, frustrated, dejected Wild faces one mighty tall task

Here's what the Wild's up against:

This is the 181^th time a team has trailed 3-0 in a playoff series. Only four times has a team come back from 0-3 to win a series; 111 of the previous series have ended in a sweep.

Only nine times has a team rallied to get to Game 7 when down 3-0 (winning four, losing five).

The four teams who have rallied to win series are Toronto in the 1942 Finals against Detroit, the Islanders in the 1975 quarterfinals against Pittsburgh, the Flyers in the 2010 Eastern Conference Final against Boston, and Los Angeles last season against San Jose in the Western Conference quarterfinals.

Think the Wild will beat the Blackhawks four straight?

I guess we'll see if the Blackhawks execute the meltdown of the century.

"Obviously, we know what we're up against right now," coach Mike Yeo said after tonight's 1-0 loss to the Blackhawks.

"We know what we're up against, so I'm not going to get up here right now and give a big rah-rah speech. We've got to win a game. It's as simple as that. In all honestly, I've never been here before. It's kind of unfamiliar territory. I guess what you do is try to draw upon previous experiences even though it's not the same. The only thing I can say is we came back from the dead once before this season, and the only way we did that was with character and belief. That's what we need right now. The other part of that equation, the reason why we were able to make the playoffs when we weren't supposed make the playoffs is we were able to look at it one game at a time and that's obviously what we have to do here, too."

The Wild has been down 0-3 twice before and swept in one of those. The Blackhawks have been up 3-0 once in the Kane-Toews era and swept the Sharks in that 2010 series.

How do the Wild brush away the frustration and the dejection and all the negative thoughts?

"That's what we'll ponder tonight and get ready for [Wednesday]," Yeo said. "I know there's a lot of character in this room. We're up against something very tough. It's not like we're [down] 3-0 against not a very good hockey team and I know what to expect from them, but like I said, two things, character and belief. There will be no feeling sorry for ourselves. Obviously we're disappointed to be in this spot, but we've got to find a way."

Corey Crawford did it to the Wild again.

Then, Jared Spurgeon was called for tripping Bryan Bickell. On the power-play breakout, Patrick Kane said he yelled for the puck from Patrick Sharp. Sharp's pass deflected off Matt Cooke's stick and the puck went to Andrew Shaw on the entry. Matt Dumba way overcommitted to his left, so when Shaw pass to Kane, he was all alone with Dubnyk and shot right between the wickets for his 102^nd career playoff point in 102 games.

From there, the Blackhawks pretty much played defense the rest of the night. The third period looked like a 20-minute penalty kill. Crawford stopped 20 shots through two periods and 10 in the third. Pucks missed the net, pucks were blocked, pucks slid just wide.

"I think that was definitely our best game of the series," said Nino Niederreiter, denied three times. "I feel like we had enough chances to win this hockey game. We played a great game today, just didn't get the bounces the way we wanted them."

Jason Pominville, who had that puck roll on him with an empty net at the end of Game 1, again was point-blank with Crawford tonight and missed the net in the second. This after a rush in which he didn't fire and missed a pass. Crawford is 11-3 against the Wild the past three years.

It certainly seems he's in our head.

Players were dejected beyond belief in the locker room. As Blackhawks coach Joel Quenneville said, this was a "goalie win."

No moral victories this time of year, and one has to wonder what the heck the Wild has to do to beat the Blackhawks because Kane and Jonathan Toews, they're going nowhere. They're just entering their prime, as scary as that might be to read as a Wild fan.

Zach Parise barely uttered words in his postgame scrum after this one, ending things by sarcastically saying when asked to identify what the Wild needs to do better: "Shoot where he isn't and maybe they'll go in."

As so often happens in the playoffs, it's easy to point fingers when teams lose a playoff round, not win. And the finger-pointing has begun.

Mikko Koivu has no goals in three playoff rounds now against Chicago. Same thing with Ryan Suter. Pominville is not scoring when they need him most. Thomas Vanek, after saying yesterday over and over that the Wild has to play its game and get pucks deep and go to work, did none of that. He stopped just inside the blue line at least a half-dozen times, either turning the puck over each time or missing Charlie Coyle on a drive-and-tap-in attempt.

Yeo has lived and died with the vets all year and the same veteran power-play unit most of the year. Tonight, those vets couldn't get into the offensive zone with the net empty, couldn't score on a power play, twice with the game having a chance to be tied.

If the Wild goes down, there better be some pretty good self-evaluation this offseason on this strategy.

There was so much dejection and frustration in the locker room – something I sensed Monday – because this team is in this position again and so quickly, one really does have to wonder if the team has it in it to muster the work that will be needed to pull off a win Thursday.

"We have to make sure we play our heart out next game and make sure we get some goals," Niederreiter said. "That's the biggest thing, we can't win if we don't score and that's exactly what happened tonight. It's frustrating but we have to make sure we give it all out."

Said Yeo, "There's no feeling sorry for ourselves right now. It's disappointing where we're at, but we've got one job to do and that's win a game. Obviously, playing on home ice, as a proud group we want to make sure that we win that game in front of our home crowd and we want to make sure that's we're bringing our best game. That's the only thing we're thinking about right now."

"The puck possession, the shot attempts were heavily in our favor," Yeo said. "The scoring chances, we generated a lot of scoring chances. Again, I'm not saying we couldn't have played better. Against that team there's a big difference when they score first, it gives them the ability to sit back and defend a little bit more and forces us to, not open up, but it's a little more difficult in terms of creating some situations."

Here's some other excerpts from some press scrums:

JASON POMINVILLE

Down 3-0- "It's obviously not going to be easy, not the position we want to be in. If you look at the game, we created a lot. We just got to find a way to put one in. We had some good looks, weren't able to find a way to put one in and they miss a play, get a bounce and end up scoring a goal. That's the difference. We just got to find a way to put one in and lately we haven't been getting those bounces go our way."

Your chance all alone on Crawford- "I didn't see a replay. You come in, you shoot. You try to score, I guess and I just missed. It was one of our chances that we generated. I thought in the second period we had a lot of looks, a lot of good looks and did a lot of good things; just weren't able to find a way. That's the difference in the game."

Looking top corner on your chance- "The play happened quick. It's a shot I like, for sure, and just wasn't able to pick the corner."

Crawford shutting off lower part- "Most goalies do, yeah. Most goalies are so good at covering the low part. You've got to try to get it up. He's obviously a big goalie, does a good job at covering the lower part. We got to find a way to put one in. That's all it is."

Not able to set up with extra skater at the end- "I think we would have been in, I think there was offsides there and ended up pulling it down and putting it back on our blue line. And at that point, it was kind of tough to get back in. We obviously would have liked to. We had an O-zone draw to try to get possession and keep it in there and get something going. But we weren't able to do that at that point."

Generate enough- "Well, I feel like we did. I feel Every line had some looks, every line had some Grade-A scoring chances. We got to find a way to put one in and we weren't able to do that tonight. Whether its us, or their goalie doing a good job, I don't know. But if we keep creating like that, we'll have a better chance to win and tonight just wasn't one of those nights we were able to find a way."

Does it become mental against them- "We know that they're obviously an elite team in the league and they got a lot of firepower. They defend well. They're good off the rush and you can't get caught into that run and gun. If you do, they'll find ways to put it in. But I thought tonight we did a pretty good job. We didn't hand them many opportunities. Again, they got a bounce and they were able to find a way. There's not much we could have done different on that play. I guess just kind of a tough break, I guess."

"Do or die now."

How tough is this? It [stinks] coming home. Like you said, we had our chances and we were unable to get one by him. They played good, but I thought we definitely improved from the first game and definitely from the second game.

Can you believe you're in this spot? "Things were rolling for us. We were scoring goals, we were keeping pucks out of the back of our net. Everyone was playing well and now we're down 3-0. Now we have nothing to lose. We're going to go out and play as hard as we can."

0 for 3 power play, including two with a chance to tie? "We've been moving it well and getting good looks. We had a couple chances and couldn't capitalize. It cost us the game."

Generate enough? "I thought in the second and third we did. First period we were skating good but we were kind of working against ourselves. We turned the puck over a lot and we'd have to come back hard. And that wears on guys. The second period, we stared to play more of an offensive, puck possession type game."

ZACH PARISE

Could see frustration on the bench, what are the feelings right now:

"Frustration that we couldn't score. That's about it."

Felt like you couldn't buy a goal. Do you feel like you did enough:

"Well, we didn't score one so I don't think we did enough. There's gotta be something more we can do."

"No, same."

Where do you go from here:

"Win the fourth game. That's about it."

Is Crawford that on, standing on his head? Or are you not getting the shots:

"He's playing well, he's making good saves."

"It's tough, we're in a hole. But like I said, just try and get that fourth one and go from there."

Seen downtimes during the regular season, you draw on that to turn it around:

"We all know what we've been through and overcome, but... like I said, we're in a hole. We gotta reset and try and get that next one."

Can you identify what you need to do to score more:

"Shoot where he isn't and maybe they'll go in."

Last TV timeout you looked like you were praying for a goal: "Yeah. I thought we were working pretty good to get one. I was just trying to stay in the game and expect to get a goal and be ready to keep going. Unfortunately we couldn't get one tonight. But I thought we played a pretty good game. We got some good chances and Crawford played real well."

Crawford: Play in this league and you're always going to be playing against a great goalie on the other end who's capable of having a good game. When you see the game progressing the way it is, you just want to try to make sure they don't get the second one and keep it at one shot away. … We worked hard to get some chances tonight and unfortunate it didn't go."

How dejected is this room: "It's disappointing. We're not going to stand here and say we're happy to be in this situation by any means. We feel we could have had one tonight and it didn't go our way. All we can do now is go win a hockey game. nobody wants to be down 3-0, but that's the situation we're in and we have to win on Thursday."

Goal against, what happened: "Well, he shot it through my legs. That is what happened."

That's it for me. It's late. Trampled By Turtles' Midnight on the Interstate is on Pandora. That's a sign at 12:30 a.m. to pack up and leave, I think.