Sweep shows Wild the catch-up work it has to do in the West

DENVER – The Wild left for Colorado on a roll and sitting in second place in the West Division.

But that's not how the team returned to Minnesota.

After getting creamed not once but twice by the Avalanche — most recently 6-0 Saturday in a matinee at Ball Arena — the Wild lost its mojo and its spot in the standings.

Now, the team trails No. 2 Colorado by three points.

"We have some work to do, clearly," Jordan Greenway said. "But we'll play them again. I think we'll have a better showing, for sure."

During the two-game sweep, the Avalanche showed why it's contending for the division title and a Stanley Cup.

With one of the best lines in hockey, an active defense and steady goaltending, Colorado didn't present any glaring holes in its game. The Wild, especially, had a tough time with the Gabriel Landeskog, Nathan MacKinnon and Mikko Rantanen trio, which combined for 17 points in the series.

"Each one of those guys is tough to knock off the puck," Zach Parise said. "When they're on, it just feels like they're constantly on a power play."

These two longtime rivals will face off again, April 5 and 7 at Xcel Energy Center, and those matchups will once again reveal how the Wild is stacking up in the race for a playoff berth. The team is 4-5-1 against the two clubs ahead of it in the West (Vegas and Colorado) and 14-5 against everyone below it except the St. Louis Blues, who the Wild has yet to play.

"We feel we're better than we showed the last two," Parise said. "But you gotta do it on a nightly basis and you gotta do it against the best teams, and these guys are no question one of the best in our division, the West, so we've gotta get better."

Before hosting the Ducks on Monday, the Wild will practice Sunday.

"We're going to do some things as a staff to kind of tweak us and jar us," Evason said.

The loss Saturday tied the franchise record for largest margin of defeat on the road, the sixth time the Wild has lost by six goals; the most recent going into Saturday's game was a 7-1 letdown, also at Colorado, on March 2, 2018.

"We'll get our legs going," said Evason, who felt the Wild's pace was poor in the series. "We'll get our heads going and hopefully get our minds going positively in the right direction so that we can catch this right now."

Some of the questions the team will try to answer, Parise said, are why the Avalanche swooped through the neutral zone and into the Wild's end with so much speed and possession and why the Wild couldn't do the same.

"I just feel like they were on top of us the last two games," Parise explained. "Any time we got the puck, there was no room for us to skate. Maybe there's something there that we can do better and learn from how to come up the ice a little cleaner and support each other a little more."

Forward Joseph Cramarossa made his Wild debut Saturday, his first NHL game since March 21, 2017, after the team called him up from the taxi squad.

The Wild also moved forward Luke Johnson from the active roster to the taxi squad.

Cramarossa, who signed with the organization last offseason and wore No. 56, received a 10-minute misconduct early in the third period after some chitchat with the Avalanche's J.T. Compher before a faceoff.

His addition to the lineup was one of a few adjustments the team made, with the Wild splitting up the Kirill Kaprizov, Victor Rask and Mats Zuccarello line at the beginning of the game. Evason also rolled out new defensive pairings in the first period, starting Ryan Suter with Jonas Brodin and Ian Cole next to Jared Spurgeon.

Carson Soucy returned from serving a one-game suspension for charging, and Brad Hunt remained in action since Matt Dumba (lower-body injury) didn't play after crashing feet first into the boards on Thursday.