Wild endure another chilly time on home ice, lose 5-4 to Calgary Flames

Eventually, the Wild will fix or fester in their struggles at home.

More than half of their remaining schedule will be played in St. Paul, so they’ll have to answer the question. Currently, a seven-game stay in March looks like a sinkhole, but the Wild can make it a slingshot.

“It’s enough time to turn around come the most important time of the year,” Jake Middleton said. “That’s what we’re looking to do.”

Either way, snapping out of their double life has to go on the back burner for now.

Not only are the Wild returning to their refuge on the road for their next five games, beginning Sunday at Chicago, but they have a bigger fire to put out: They’re slipping, having lost five of their past six games after the Flames extinguished their last-ditch rally 5-4 Saturday at Xcel Energy Center, and they are in jeopardy of falling out of the top three in the Central Division for the first time since they were a mere five games into the season.

“We know what our winning recipe is,” coach John Hynes said. “But a lot of times it’s the commitment to do that. It’s the willingness to do that, shift after shift, game in, game out, regardless of what happens in the game, and right now we don’t have it consistently enough.”

Calgary snared control in a feisty second period, scoring twice to break a 1-1 tie, before needing two more tallies in the third to ultimately hold off the Wild.

The Wild submitted a too-little, too-late comeback by burying a pair in the final 1 minute, 14 seconds for a more flattering finish, but they were more competitive than during the listless 4-0 drubbing by Utah Hockey Club on Thursday. Still, they couldn’t shake their funk at home, where they’ve dropped four in a row and are 11-12-1.

“The last two games we don’t want to fight for inside ice,” Hynes said. “We want to extra pass. We don’t want to trigger. We don’t want to rehunt rebounds. We don’t want to get to the net front.”

The Flames capitalized on the power play 6:58 into the first period when Andrei Kuzmenko tipped in a Nazem Kadri feed.

The teams were back to square one by 9:34 when Mats Zuccarello set up Joel Eriksson Ek for a blistering shot between the faceoff circles that handcuffed goalie Dustin Wolf, who finished with 21 saves.

Then tensions flared in the second period after Jakub Lauko boarded Kevin Bahl behind the Calgary net.

Lauko was penalized two minutes and fought the Flames’ Ryan Lomberg on his first shift back, a tussle Lauko was expecting. Bahl never returned.

“The hit wasn’t ideal,” Lauko said. “I’m not trying to injure anyone on the ice.”

After Wild goalie Marc-Andre Fleury thwarted Martin Pospisil’s attempt off an odd-man break that started as a 2-on-0 for Calgary, the Flames kept the puck in Wild territory and Pospisil wired in his do-over when he got on the end of a rebound at 12:28.

Calgary kept the pressure on, and after Fleury gobbled up a close call, both teams started jostling in his crease. Fleury got involved, and Rasmus Andersson punched Fleury, prolonging the melee; Andersson and Fleury were penalized for roughing.

“I’d like to see us have more pushback,” Hynes said. “We just kinda took that. I didn’t see much response from that. Those are all those little things that draw a team together, that becomes hard to play against, the willingness to do that. I didn’t like that part of it.”

Andersson had the last laugh: While Eriksson Ek was in the penalty box for tripping, Andersson ripped a one-timer by Fleury with eight seconds left in the second. The Flames went 2-for-3 on the power play.

BOXSCORE: Flames 5, Wild 4

NHL standings

Calgary stretched its lead on a shot by Clark Bishop off the rush at 11:53 of the third period.

“I gotta stop that,” said Fleury, who totaled 24 saves and passed Patrick Roy for second all-time in minutes played by a goaltender (60,236:01). “I overplayed it on the far side. That’s on me.”

Frederick Gaudreau converted on a Wild power play (1-for-2) at 14:15, but Kuzmenko retaliated 14 seconds later before photo-finish goals by Marcus Foligno (18:46) and Zuccarello (19:33) during the waning seconds.

But the close ending didn’t camouflage the Wild’s issues.

“I don’t think our game is ideal at all,” Lauko said. “I think we need to just start from fundamentals again. We don’t have a good forecheck. We don’t have a good backcheck. We’re losing pucks on blue lines, and we’re not hard in front of the net.

“So, I think we need a big, hard reset and go back to what made us great in the first half.”

Dallas has already leapfrogged the Wild in the division, and Colorado is knocking on the door.

If they don’t want to tarnish the terrific start that catapulted them to near the top of the league, the Wild have to take a stand soon.

“You choose your hard, and right now we’re not choosing the right hard,” Hynes said. “So, now we’re choosing to lose, right? That’s hard. Losing’s not easy. Winning’s not easy. We gotta get back to the commitment level that it takes to win, the mentality, the fire, the competitiveness, the depth in the lineup.

“Right now it’s not enough.”

Fortunately for the Wild, they’re going on the road, where they’re an NHL-leading 17-5-3.

Their problems at home will be waiting for them when they get back.

“It’s kind of dumb that we’re looking at the road as a positive,” Fleury said. “But there’s no easy nights, so there will be tough games on the road, too. Lot of good teams there.

“But we have a lot of home games until the end of the season, and we have to figure our stuff out.”