The good news is the season is five games old and the Wild has picked up points in four without the much-ballyhooed first line exploding offensively.
The bad news is the season's five games old and the Wild's much-ballyhooed first line hasn't exploded offensively.
Saturday night against the Detroit Red Wings, the Wild was pinned in its own zone for extended stretches. If the Wild was fortunate to escape, the puck was usually out of the offensive zone in a nanosecond.
The team desperately could have used the Devin Setoguchi-Mikko Koivu-Dany Heatley line to stop the bleeding.
However, not only couldn't the trio get anything going offensively, they showed frustration by turning pucks over and trying to do too many things individually.
"If you get frustrated, if you start to force things, if you lose your focus on the things you're supposed to do without the puck, then you just spiral into a deeper mess," coach Mike Yeo said after Saturday's 3-2 overtime loss.
"Those guys, they are battling hard. They're getting a few looks, but they're not getting as many looks because they want to help the team. They know that their job to help the team is to score goals. Right now they're more focused on the result of scoring the goal. Because of that, you force things, because of that you lose focus on other areas, and you lose opportunities to get to that part of your game."
In the preseason, when games weren't ramped up and they weren't facing shutdown defensemen such as Niklas Kronwall all game, the Wild's top line combined for seven goals and 12 assists in four games.