KANATA, ONTARIO – It's a road map the Wild would like to ditch, one that steers the team off course and into a hole.
But because it has routinely arrived at the desired destination, as it did again Saturday when the team outlasted the Senators for a 4-3 win at Canadian Tire Centre, the Wild doesn't mind the journey, even if it can be bumpy.
"We've been there a few times this year," center Charlie Coyle said. "I think we know how to react to it now."
After overcoming another first-period deficit, the Wild improved to 13-12-2 when yielding the first goal — a perhaps baffling clip considering how valuable momentum can be in today's NHL.
Experience, though, appears to trump that in the Wild's case, since the team doesn't trigger panic mode when it falls behind. Despite getting outplayed early by the Senators, who racked up 15 first-period shots en route to a 1-0 lead, the Wild responded with a businesslike second in which it scored three times to build a 3-2 edge that grew in the third when winger Zach Parise tacked on another.
What can't be overlooked, though, is the steadiness goalie Devan Dubnyk showed in the first period to prevent the Wild's climb from getting steeper than a goal.
"If he didn't play as well as he did, we'd probably be down three at the 10-minute mark, I figure," coach Bruce Boudreau said. "Once we got our skating legs, I thought we started to go a little bit."
Helping hands
Boudreau debuted the line of Parise, Coyle and youngster Luke Kunin out of the holiday break in the attempt to ignite a faster pace, but that hasn't been the only repercussion from the union.