"I think sometimes we feel a bit too comfortable with a one-nothing lead," said Wild forward Nino Niederreiter. "The biggest thing for us is to keep going, keep giving it to them and don't sit back and wait until they push back."
Minnesota has certainly been capable of doing just that. Charlie Coyle scored 40 seconds into the game against the Pittsburgh Penguins on Nov.25, then Niederreiter added a second less than eight minutes later.
It allowed the Wild to weather a goal by Phil Kessel before Coyle scored again late in the first period en route to a 5-2 win.
So far on this road trip, the Wild has actually been able to score first early, getting a goal by Jason Pominville just past the five-minute mark in Vancouver and one by Chris Stewart less than four minutes in on Friday against Calgary.
Both times, however, the Wild has been unable to build momentum and capitalize.
A few minutes after Pominville's goal in Vancouver, the Canucks scored a goal that was eventually waved off, but it had sapped the energy from bench. Even a 2-0 lead early in the second wasn't enough to hold them off, as Brandon Sutter and Ben Hutton scored power play goals 1:59 apart to dig the Canucks out of their hole.
In Calgary, first-period goals by Kris Versteeg and Mikael Backlund 67 seconds apart turned a one-goal Wild lead into a one-goal deficit.
"I feel like we've shown in part of the season that we can step on the gas pedal and keep going," Niederreiter said. "We have to focus on doing that more often."
Wild coach Bruce Boudreau saw some encouraging signs in the game against the Flames, however. Instead of being satisfied with the lead, Minnesota missed on several chances to build on it.
"We had two or three really good chances to increase the lead. [Pominville] had a good chance, Stewart had a really good chance," Boudreau said. "And then we make a mistake and it seems like, the last four or five games, we make a mistake and it ends up in the back of our net.
"It's like it takes us a few minutes to recompose, and by then, they had the power-play goal. If you look, with about four minutes to go in the second period, they only had 13 shots."
Still, with a victory tomorrow against the Edmonton Oilers, the Wild has a chance to finish off a winning road trip on Wednesday in Toronto.
"If we win tomorrow, then we would have lost one game in regulation in the last seven," Boudreau said. "I think most teams would take that percentage. That's what we're looking at."
