Postgame Hat Trick: Lightning 3, Wild 0

Wild.com's Dan Myers gives three takeaways from the Wild's 3-0 loss against the Tampa Bay Lightning at Amalie Arena in Tampa on Saturday night:

1. For more than 57 minutes, Minnesota avoided catastrophe, keeping the NHL's highest scoring team off the board.
But like a bolt of lightning, Tampa Bay struck three times in the span of 1 minute, 49 seconds over the final two-plus minutes of regulation to capture the win.
The biggest goal was Dan Girardi's game winner, which came off of a Brayden Point pass that went through the legs of a Lightning forward and eluded traffic in front -- right onto the tape of a crashing Girardi on the doorstep.
"You take your foot off the gas for a second and they can get one," said Wild forward Matt Cullen. "You play with fire with that when you sit back on those guys."
Just 52 seconds after Girardi broke the ice, Tyler Johnson scored a beauty, picking a corner on Wild goaltender Alex Stalock from the right face-off dot.
"Just a perfect shot by Johnson," said Wild forward Daniel Winnik.
Afterward, Wild coach Bruce Boudreau was disappointed with the result but thrilled with the effort his club put forth, playing on the second of back-to-back nights at the end of a four-game road trip and a stretch of five games in eight days.

"I thought our guys played great, the heart that they played with, the determination, it's unfortunate the last two minutes ended like they did," Boudreau said. "I told them after the game that if they play like that they're going to win a lot of hockey games."
2. The Wild held the NHL's best power play off the board, including a critical, minute-long 5-on-3 midway through the third period.
Boasting the League's most lethal power play, as well as two of its top offensive players in Steven Stamkos and Nikita Kucherov, Tampa Bay had a pair of chances in the opening 10 minutes to crack the scoreboard.
But the Wild held strong, thanks in large part to Stalock, who made 12 saves in the first period, and even took it to the Lightning over the second half of the frame.

After a scoreless first 40 minutes, the Lightning had 1:09 of two-man advantage time after penalties by Mikko Koivu and Ryan Suter -- two of the Wild's most reliable penalty killers -- banished them to the box.
But Winnik -- who blocked a shot with his right kidney -- and Jonas Brodin were among the stars of the kill, which gave Minnesota a brief shot in the arm as it pushed for its first goal of the game.
Unfortunately for the Wild, it never came.
"Anytime you kill a 5-on-3, it lifts up the whole bench," Stalock said. "The way they were blocking shots -- [Winnik] had a big one. Putting your body right in front of a one-timer isn't easy."
Girardi's goal took a big mental toll on the Wild while Johnson's snipe amounted to a knockout blow.
"I think [Girardi's goal], it really deflated us, and you could tell after the shifts after that," Winnik said. "It's unfortunate the outcome, but hopefully if we put efforts in like that every night and we should get points out of those games."
"In my mind it was 1-0. You could see that once they scored that one goal the shoulders go down and then they score 30 second later and then an empty net goal," Boudreau said. "It's a 1-0 game. I couldn't say anything other than we played our hearts out and everybody tried to do what they had to do."
3. The Christmas break comes at a good time for the Wild.
As Winnik noted, the sheer number of games hasn't been bad. But the amount of travel encompassing those games has perhaps taken its toll.
Beginning with a Sunday game in San Jose on Dec. 10, a game which wrapped a week in southern California, the Wild has played eight games in the span of 14 days, going from the Bay Area back to St. Paul then onto Chicago, Ottawa and south Florida.
Included in that stretch is a pair of back-to-backs.
"It's a long season. The three days off at Christmas is coming at a good time where they can recharge and get their energy back together again," Boudreau said. "I mean, where we are, my last year in Anaheim we were 12-15 going into the Christmas break and all you do is get hot, and when you get healthy, I think things take off."

Something to watch for after the break will be the health of the roster. Nino Niederreiter sustained a lower-body injury in the first period Friday against the Florida Panthers. He's been in a walking boot the past couple of days, but his injury isn't considered serious.
Goaltender Devan Dubnyk has been on the ice the past couple of days as well and could be close to a return.
Of course, the Wild is also awaiting the return of forward Zach Parise, who continues to work his way back from microdiscectomy surgery he had in October.
The hope is all three can return shortly after the break or early in 2018 and Minnesota be at full strength for the first time this season. In a tightly packed Western Conference, the Wild will have to make its push for the postseason soon.
"It's a good opportunity for us to catch our breath here and regroup," Cullen said. "We've had an extremely grueling schedule here as of late, and now we've got an opportunity to kind of catch our breath and hopefully understand that we need a playoff push here immediately because we just experienced it can happen.
"But it can go the other way just as quick. We need to come back here with that urgency that our playoff push has to start immediately and our schedule gets a little bit better as far as we can hopefully be home a bit. It's been tough here lately. But It's important that we all understand how urgent it is when we get back."

Loose pucks

• Stalock finished with 28 saves on 30 shots.
• Lightning goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy stopped all 22 shots he faced to earn his fourth shutout of the season.
• The Wild killed all six Lightning power plays.
• Minnesota went 0-for-6 on its own man-advantage opportunities.
• The Wild will open the post-Christmas schedule with a game against the Dallas Stars on Wednesday at Xcel Energy Center.
• Attendance: 19,092

He said it

"I don't know that there's any moral victories right now. I think it's a matter of we need to find a way to get two points on a regular basis." -- Cullen on sticking with the NHL's best team for 57-plus minutes

Dan's three stars

* Andrei Vasilevskiy
\\ Dan Girardi
\\* Alex Stalock