Wild goalie Devan Dubnyk, the savior of this season, was blasted Wednesday for six goals on 17 shots. On a couple of them, he had little to zero chance. A couple were softies. And a couple were toss-ups — the kinds of saves he made far more often than not during his incredible regular-season run with the Wild.

There were far more things wrong with the Wild on Wednesday than Dubnyk. An all-around mess is to blame for that 6-1 loss. But lurking within that loss was an extension of a troubling trend with Dubnyk: he simply hadn't been as otherworldly lately, even before Wednesday's disaster.

In Dubnyk's first 32 games with the Wild, he posted a 93.9 save percentage, putting him among the top 5 goalies in the league in that span.

In his final seven regular-season games, he posted a 92.5 save percentage — still quite good, but a mark that ranked 14th among NHL goalies with at least 240 minutes played during that span.

In his first three playoff games, it was more of the recent same: a 92.2 save percentage. The number in the playoffs obviously looks a lot worse when factoring in the six goals Wednesday; now, through four playoff games, Dubnyk's save percentage is a dismal 86.4.

War On Ice tracks the quality of saves a goalie is making, dividing them into high, medium and low danger. In those final seven regular-season games, Dubnyk was still stopping the high-danger shots at around the same rate as he previously had (around 86 percent). It was the medium and low-danger goals that were getting in more frequently. In the playoffs, the sample size is too small to draw many conclusions, but he has allowed seven goals on 24 high-danger shots (70.8 save percentage), a bad number that was hurt further Wednesday but was already down from where it had been earlier this year.

The Wild didn't need Dubnyk to be great in the final handful of regular season games, since his MVP-level work before that had all but guaranteed them a playoff spot, nor did they Minnesota need him to be great in the first three games of the playoffs because its overall play was so sharp that it could take a 2-1 series lead.

And again, it wasn't like Dubnyk was bad down the stretch or in the playoffs before Wednesday; he was just closer to earth than he had been, and frankly he just wasn't tested a ton during many stretches of the first three postseason games.

But with St. Louis seeming to have found its legs and another gear Wednesday, and with the Wild needing to now get at least one more road win to take this series, I dare say Minnesota needs MVP-level Dubnyk to resurface. That means stopping those "high danger" shots at an impressive rate. And in general, it means being sharper not just than he was in Game 4, but also in the 10 games that preceded it.

(Amazing photo of the Blues' third goal by Strib photog Carlos Gonzalez).