The Wild continues to be completely incapable of stringing wins together, which is why this team’s got a mountain to climb in order to make the playoffs.

The Wild hasn’t won three regulation games in a row since the first three games of the season. If the Wild doesn’t solve this problem immediately, the season is over folks. The Wild has 18 games left, and these days, winning two in a row is a chore.

Quite frankly, a team that goes an entire season without being able to group together a string of victories doesn’t deserve to be in the playoffs.

It’s always something with the Wild after a big win, and tonight for the first time, the Wild may have lost solely because of its goalie Niklas Backstrom, who was shakier than a 6.0 earthquake. Two softies surrendered in the first period, and Backstrom was finally chased 8:45 into the second period after Anze Kopitar gave the Kings a 3-2 lead.

As you can read in the gamer, Backstrom took a swan dive on the knife, which is commendable, but it doesn’t help in the standings. Who knows where the Wild will be when all the late games are done tonight, but it was three points back of a playoff spot entering the game.

Showing he’s got the worst luck, Josh Harding gave up a goal — the winner — on the first shot he saw and suffered the loss. I’ve got to count up how many losses Harding has in his career in games Backstrom was chased, but it’s at least three or four.

The Wild rallied twice from one-goal deficits, but it never could bounce back after Anze Kopitar’s third goal. Teddy Purcell made it 4-2 on a power play, and even though Eric Belanger made it 4-3, Jonathan Quick never gave up another.

There’s just a major character flaw on this team. Just a lack of concentration. Just check out the replay of the Kings’ power play after Dan Fritsche took a boarding minor with less than four minutes left. For 10 seconds, the Wild was playing with three skaters until Martin Skoula finally jumped over the boards when somebody realized they were more shorthanded than they needed to be.

That’s just unacceptable in a game like this, and the same thing happened early last month at home.

That makes for yet another must-win tomorrow against Anaheim.

Lastly, after not playing in 11 months, Kurtis Foster made his unexpected season debut without the benefit of a morning skate or warmup. Foster had just got done with a 35-minute bike ride, squats and sprints when 13 minutes before the game, he was called into action because Brent Burns got sick in warmups.

Foster was scored on during his first shift, but two shifts later, he was back to even because he was on for Owen Nolan’s goal. He played 9 1/2 minutes. We’ll see if he’ll play against the Ducks; Lemaire said he thought Burns would be recovered by then.

OK, I’m outta here.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 7th, 2009 at 3:06 pm and is filed under Game coverage. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.