ST. PAUL, Minn. -- Behind the wooden, emblem-adorned doors of the Minnesota Wild locker room, a frustrated team had a meeting following Saturday's 6-5 overtime loss to the Nashville Predators.
For much longer than usual, the doors stayed closed instead of opening up to reporters following the game. More words were shared between a team that battled back from down two goals to force overtime only to lose out on the extra point to a team it's chasing in the Western Conference standings.
"We just can't be accepting those games," forward Charlie Coyle said. "We can't think it's OK to just get a point. The last two games we've lost in overtime at home. I don't think we can expect to get scored five, six goals on and expect to win. We've got to just tighten things up and buy in a little more to this team, team game, team aspect."
Minnesota had forwards Matt Cooke and Ryan Carter return to the lineup after missing time with injuries and then center Mikael Granlund was a late scratch because of an illness.
Goaltender Darcy Kuemper, returning from illness, was pulled after the first period after allowing three goals on 14 shots. Niklas Backstrom allowed three goals on 30 shots in relief and the defense in front of the goaltenders allowed 44 shots to Nashville.
"You score five goals, for our team it should be automatic," head coach Mike Yeo said. "But turn a game into a track meet, just go back and forth, trade a chance, give a chance, get a chance, that's not our game. So obviously the result was not the right one."
The Wild would claw back after Nashville took a 5-3 lead in the third period. Zach Parise deflected a Jason Pominville shot for his second goal of the game and 13th of the season, and Minnesota's second power-play tally of the game.
With Backstrom pulled for the extra attacker, Thomas Vanek tied the game with 47.8 seconds left. Vanek has five goals this season with two coming as game-tying goals with the goaltender pulled.
Then Mattias Ekholm scored 1:45 into overtime, circling around Minnesota's net for the game-winner.
"It's frustrating," Parise said. "We can't give up 41 shots or whatever it was. I know it was over 40. We can't do that. We gave them too many opportunities and too much zone time. We iced the puck a bunch. We had a bunch of faceoffs in our own zone. They had a shooting mentality and they got a lot of goals that way."
Which led to another meeting for Minnesota, which lost in overtime for the second straight game and has two wins in the past seven games.
"We're not hiding from this," Yeo said. "We understand that this is not good enough, and we're not going to try to paint a pretty picture about it. We know that it is not good enough.
"Pretty simply we're the ones that got ourselves into it. So we need to get together here, play together, play the right way and get ourselves out of it."
Minnesota was finally healthy again on Saturday -- before Granlund was scratched -- and the Wild were hosting a team ahead of them in the standings.
Nashville entered the day with 42 points, third in the Central Division and fifth in the Western Conference. Minnesota was fifth in the Central and 10th in the West, which only serves to make Saturday's performance more perplexing to the Wild.
"That's the tough part because these teams, the teams you're chasing in your own division, those are the teams you've got to beat," Parise said. "Those are the games you've got to win. When you don't, all of a sudden that gap gets a lot bigger. That's what we're staring at right now."
Yeo had a pointed talk with his team in Arizona last week. After a shootout win against the Coyotes, the Wild lost at Chicago and suffered an overtime loss at home to Boston before Saturday's loss.
Behind closed doors Saturday, Minnesota held another meeting. Captain Mikko Koivu knows the next step.
"Yeah, well, I believe you've got to act," Koivu said. "We can talk and say all the right things, but in the end it has to be happening on the ice. We've got some good part of the game but we can't keep it for 60 minutes. We got to find an answer for that to beat good hockey teams. We're chasing these guys, for example, tonight, and we need points. Bottom line is we have to be better and it has to happen on the ice."
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