Wild hope road trip boosts their spirits and level of play

When things took a turn for the worse for the Delta Tau Chi fraternity at Faber College, Brothers Otter and Boone delivered a succinct order meant to be a pick-me-up for the chapter.

"Road trip."

The Wild, its dauber down after back-to-back losses in which it surrendered six goals each night, will get to test the "Animal House" theory that travel is a spirit-lifter over the next seven days. No, the hockey team won't be stopping at Emily Dickinson College, home of exploding kilns, nor will players be visiting the Dexter Lake Club. Instead, the Wild will embark on a four-game cross-Canada tour that begins Sunday night in Edmonton, shifts east to Ottawa and Toronto on Tuesday and Thursday and finishes back out west at Calgary on Saturday.

"For sure, it's definitely a big road trip for us after these two losses,'' defenseman Jon Merrill said after the Wild fell 6-2 to Florida on Friday night at Xcel Energy Center. "… It starts with the first shift in the first game in Edmonton. We've got to take it shift by shift and get our game back on track here."

Coming off a 6-3 loss at Winnipeg on Wednesday, the Wild got off to a great start Friday against the Atlantic Division-leading Panthers with Kirill Kaprizov hammering home Jared Spurgeon's diagonal slap pass for a power-play goal and 1-0 lead 7 minutes, 7 seconds into the first period.

From there, however, the Wild's game deteriorated. Minnesota didn't have a shot on goal in the final 11:03 of the first period as Florida took a 2-1 lead. For the game, the Wild had 11 giveaways and struggled to get the puck out of its zone. And while Kaprizov and Mats Zuccarello each supplied a goal and an assist, they and their center, Ryan Hartman, each were a minus-4 on the night.

"I don't think we're getting out of our end real clean these last few games," Merrill said. "We've got to come back together as a five-man unit, communicate and make little plays coming out of our end. Like I said, we're trying to be a little too cute."

Coach Dean Evason saw uncharacteristic play from his team and was disappointed with "not getting the puck the heck out of our zone."

"We were unintelligent, right?" he said. "And we haven't done that for a long time. We had a good chat after the game that we never talk about obviously being better than a team or whatever, but we weren't worse than that team tonight. We just made worse mistakes."

Eliminating such mistakes will be key on the trip, starting against Edmonton, which has game-changing offensive talent in Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl. Teams often play a more simplified game on the road, and that could help the Wild return to the form that saw it go 11-1-1 before the losses to Winnipeg and Florida.

"We usually don't let these things linger too long," said goalie Cam Talbot, who gave up a combined nine goals in the past two losses after surrendering two or fewer in four consecutive victories. "We nip 'em in the bud pretty quick, and we definitely have the confidence in this room to do it. There's no doubt in my mind that we'll come up with a big effort on Sunday."

The Wild are hopeful that confidence and the chance to reset its game on the road trip will make the two-game skid a speed bump rather than a trend.

"It'd be good for us to go on this long road trip, be together for a couple days, regroup, have a good stand and then come home just on the momentum and just fire away," forward Jordan Greenway said. "So that's the plan."