The Wild couldn’t get closer to a playoff spot during their recent 10-day hiatus, but they did move in the opposite direction.
They’ll relaunch their season on Wednesday at Chicago seven points shy of a Western Conference wild-card berth instead of trailing by six like when they started their bye week; a win by St. Louis while the Wild were idle before the All-Star break upped the distance.
But a one-point hike doesn’t make life that much tougher for the Wild, not when the climb back to contention was already steep and filled with competition.
“We still have some runway to kind of control our own destiny,” Jake Middleton said. “That’s [what] we’re looking to do is just worry about us and let the chips fall where they may.”
After the two wild-card seeds is a five-team race to close the gap, and the Wild are at the back of the pack.
Standing in their way is Calgary, Arizona, Seattle and Nashville. The Predators have 54 points just like the Blues do, but the Blues are in the final wild-card seat because they’ve logged two fewer games.
Lagging behind their Central Division rivals is the Wild, who have been stuck at 47 points after coughing up third-period leads in their last two losses and blowing a chance to hurdle teams they’re chasing and shave their deficit significantly.
“The attention to detail that we felt like we had … faltered before the break,” said coach John Hynes, who stressed the Wild’s habits in front of the net in their return to practice on Monday from a layoff that didn’t heal all the team’s ailments.