Wild suffers first regulation loss of the season, and it's predictably in Anaheim

Mike Yeo said this morning that the Wild had a chance to make this a "great road trip."

Didn't happen, and now the team better hope it doesn't come down with any infectious diseases in the next few weeks. Sorry, cheap joke, but if you remember, the Blues and the Wild were the first two teams of many (including the Ducks) that came down with the mumps last year and it wasn't long after they shared hotels and locker rooms in So. Cal.

Good evening from one of my favorite places, the Honda Center and the O.C., where the Wild almost always suffers a similar fate. Play well, generate more than enough scoring chances to win, … yet lose.

The Wild lost 4-1 tonight yet felt it played its best game of the five this season. Hard to argue. It did, yet in a 33-minute-long one-goal game, the Wild couldn't tie the score despite oodles of chances, especially by the Jason Zucker-Mikko Koivu-Nino Niederreiter line, and next thing you know it's 3-1 before an empty-netter made the score look like a rout it was not.

Remember, it was the same story last year when the Wild played its third game here. Dominate throughout, two mistakes, and boom, 2-1 loss.

It was the 10th time in 11 games against the Ducks that the Wild lost. Oh, and good news, the Ducks play in St. Paul on Saturday. In Minnesota, the Ducks have managed to eke out six consecutive one-goal wins.

Tonight, the Zucker-Koivu-Niederreiter line combined for one goal, 15 shots on net and 29 shot attempts. They were dangerous every time they had the puck and yet couldn't beat Anton Khudobin more than once – a Niederreiter breakaway where he fended off the backcheck of Hampus Lindholm. It was Niederreiter's second goal of the season after a real pedestrian start to his year – two shots in four games before tonight.

"We've got to tighten up defensively. We [stunk] defensively," Coyle said. "No talk, no communication. We killed our team tonight. We were all bunched up on all three goals. We were just off tonight. Communication is everything out there. We do it in practice. We work on it everyday. One simple, 'Hey, you stay there, I got this,' you're set. There was none of that. It hurt us."
Matt Dumba again had a very rough night in what has been a rough start to his season (I'll write more about this in my follow in Tuesday's paper). The Wild coaches mixed up the second and third pairs tonight, moving Marco Scandella with Dumba and Jonas Brodin with Christian Folin. Scandella and Dumba were minus-3.

My guess is they're resisting reuniting Ryan Suter and Brodin and Scandella and Spurgeon because then you'd have a third pair of Nate Prosser and Dumba or Folin or the two youngsters being paired together with one playing uncomfortably on their off side.

Devan Dubnyk stopped 18 of 21 shots, allowing at least three goals for the third time in four starts. The first goal by Cam Fowler was tipped by Coyle. The second goal by Rickard Rakell was redirected from right in front. The third goal by Mike Santorelli, the Coyle line didn't slow Anaheim's entry and next thing you know Dubnyk was serving up a Shawn Horcoff rebound to Santorelli in front. Santorelli pushed Justin Fontaine onto Dubnyk and it was 3-1.

The replay appears to show the puck was already beyond Dubnyk when the contact was made, yet the Wild curiously didn't challenge.

Dubnyk asked goalie coach Bob Mason afterward why they didn't.

Yeo wished he challenged but said the Jumbotron screen on the bench side tonight was blank. Now I understand what so many fans were tweeting me. I didn't get it at the time because the screen on the press box side worked.

But, regardless of the malfunction, the Wild has two people in the video room that's tasked to relay stuff to Andrew Brunette on the bench. Also, Darby Hendrickson's in the press box able to talk to the bench.

"We have to fix our system," Yeo said. "There's been twice this season where we're waiting for word and we find out after that they are talking, but we're not getting word. In hindsight, I definitely would have challenged it, but without any communication, … I talked to the players on the ice and they felt it wasn't worth the challenge."

Asked what he meant by communication, it sounds like the video coordinator Jonas Plumb is trying to talk to the bench and they're not hearing him.

"It's not anybody's fault," Yeo said. "It's a communications thing. We have to fix the system. Everybody's doing what they're supposed to be doing, but the messages are not going through."

The good news tonight is the Wild moved the puck well and generated a ton of chances. The Koivu line was awesome. Niederreiter finally looked like his old self. Koivu won 18 of 26 draws, had three strips, six shots and an assist. The Granlund line was hit and miss. Same with the fourth line. The third line was awful.

The second power-play unit is scoreless this year, which is another issue.

With no practice Monday and me in the air for most the day, I'm holding a lot of stuff back for a follow. So you can read that stuff in Tuesday's paper.

Check out the game story and the Mikko Koivu-Saku Koivu-led notebook on startribune.com/wild Monday.