Wild lets two points slip away in the Big D

Costly loss for the Wild tonight. Up 3-2 in the third on Kyle Brodziak's go-ahead goal, the Wild handed two points to the team right on its tail.

The Wild nearly crashed Mike Modano's party and could have been seven points up on Dallas with a win. Now it's three with St. Louis, which can take the top spot in the NHL with a win, on deck Sunday in Minnesota to open a four-game homestand. A win could have given the Wild an eight-point lead on Phoenix, too.

Matt Moulson was talking this morning about how excited he was to parachute right into a playoff race. After all, this is a guy that didn't have a lot of meaningful games late in seasons on Long Island and certainly not in the past four months in Buffalo.

Tonight's game had the intensity of two desperate teams fighting for a playoff spot and the Wild battled back twice from one-goal deficits.

But then after taking a 3-2 lead 1:23 into the third, the wheels came off. It started a minute after Brodziak's goal when Matt Cooke took a tripping penalty. I still haven't seen the replay because I was pounding on my keyboard, but the Twitterphere was screaming that it was a knee.

Regardless, the Wild killed the two minutes off and it appears Valeri Nichushkin escaped injury.

But two minutes after the kid, Haula, who scored his first career shortie on a great play in the first to tie the game at 1-1, generated speed again. But as he drove the net, he locked skates with Cody Eakin and bulled into goalie Kari Lehtonen.

Darcy Kuemper did a terrific job killing the major, but on Dallas' ninth shot on the power play, Tyler Seguin, who had a hat trick two nights earlier against Vancouver, scored the tying goal for his third point of the night.

Four minutes later, Brodziak sent the puck up top to Clayton Stoner. Stoner quickly slid it to his left to Keith Ballard. The puck barely stayed in the zone. Too bad it didn't leave because Ballard looked to shoot, then tried to slide it back to Stoner.

It happened way late in their shift, too, so they were gassed and basically dead meat when speedy Erik Cole picked it off. Kuemper was the only hope to save Ballard's bacon, but Cole scored the eventual winner with 4:49 left.

To Ballard's credit, he was standing in the locker room just waiting for the buzzards.

"Bad read on my part. It was pretty obvious what I was looking to do. I don't know if I telegraphed it, but I misjudged how high he was. Split-second decision. Bad feeling. Tough way to lose a game."

We'll see if he plays against St. Louis. The Wild has seven healthy defenseman and coach Mike Yeo made the questionable decision to scratch Nate Prosser, who has been nothing but consistent for two months (plus-9 in the past 20 games). I've got to think Prosser slides back in.

But tonight, Yeo said the Ballard mistake was bound to cost them eventually. He said the Wild gave up way too many odd-man rushes, and frankly, even the Wild's most reliable players were playing the puck like a grenade. Normally reliable Ryan Suter and Jared Spurgeon each had tough nights.

Moulson had five shots, an assist on Charlie Coyle's goal to snap a 15-game drought (actually had no goals in 25 of his past 26 games) and drew two penalties. Moulson said he has to bury his chances though.

Unfortunately the Haula penalty put a damper on what would have been an awesome story line with his shortie. It was so fitting because Saturday morning, Haula, who led the University of Minnesota in scoring the past two years, and I were talking about the pride he's taking in his fourth line and penalty kill duties, saying, "I love my role on this team. I've accepted it."

On the Haula penalty, Yeo said, "I'm not sure what else a player can do. You're trying to score a goal. Unless you want the player not to try to score a goal. I feel bad for the goalie. He got hurt. But if you watch the replay, he's trying to make a play to score a goal, he gets tripped up a little bit, there's really nowhere for him to go. I would say it's incidental."