Last night, the Wild took another one on the chin and lost 4-1 to the Rangers in Manhattan. The loss marked a seventh loss in the past eight road games for the hometown team. It also brought the Wild's road record to 6-10-3, which currently ranks as the second worst in the Western Conference (only Edmonton 6-13-2 is worse).
After the game, no one seemingly had answers for this latest disaster. Mike Yeo had no answers. Mikko Koivu had no answers. Zach Parise had no answers. Niklas Backstrom, you guessed it, had no answers. All were frequent users of the phrase "I don't know". They simply can not explain how poorly this team is playing right now.
The team is simply in a free fall. It feels very similar to the fall of the 2011-12 season when they were flying high through the first two and a half months before plummeting out of the playoffs by season's end. Nothing can go right. Nothing. Just ask Niklas Backstrom.
Minnesota has one last game before the holiday break, and that comes tonight in Philadelphia. The Flyers are a more dangerous team than when the two met in St. Paul at the beginning of the month, so expect the home team to come out guns blazing in this game. Should the Wild lose and Phoenix wins tonight, the Wild will be on the outside looking in the playoff brackets as they go home for the holidays. Not exactly a great feeling when taking a sip of egg nog.
Its hard to say what will stop this free fall. The head coach feels the answer is Stephane Veilleux. Russo believes the answer could be splitting up Koivu and Parise. Fans are starting to preach that the answer is firing Yeo.
At this point, lets try anything. Because you have nothing to lose when you can't win, and for that matter, score (DISCLAIMER: This is not an endorsement to fire Mike Yeo).
Follow Giles on Twitter @gilesferrell
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