ST. PAUL, Minn. _ If you're a Wild fanatic who doubles as a worrywart, there was a laundry list of things to be concerned about Sunday night.
First: Captain Mikko Koivu, who centers the Wild's most productive line, was sick and missed his first game of the season. Second: Backup Darcy Kuemper, whom coach Bruce Boudreau challenged to be better seven days earlier, was starting. Third: The Wild were playing for the seventh time in 11 nights and coming off an emotional come-from-behind victory over Anaheim the night before.
Boudreau was nervous about a letdown, fatigue or a combination of the two, and that's just what he saw during a 4-2 loss to the Nashville Predators.
For the third time on a four-game homestand, the Wild squandered a two-goal lead and for the second time paid for it with a defeat.
Filip Forsberg scored the tying and winning goals in the third period. Nino Niederreiter hit the post for what would have been the tying goal with two minutes left. The loss snapped the Wild's six-game winning streak against the Central Division and 15-game point streak against the Western Conference.
Mikael Granlund and Jason Pominville gave the Wild a 2-0 lead in the first period, but the Wild started to show signs of lethargy in the second.
James Neal scored early, the Wild were outshot to 10-4 and by the 2:20 mark of the third period, the score was tied on Forsberg first of two goals. He buried the winner with 6:36 left when Kuemper, who had played well, was slow to react to a one-timer to his right.
In a month where it seems no lead is safe in the NHL, it was actually the sixth consecutive Wild game where at least a two-goal lead vanished either by the Wild or their opponent.
Boudreau expected the Predators to come out flying.
They were completing a five-game trip fraught with all sorts of travel problems. There was a mechanical issue with their charter that caused them to arrive in Denver way late, they were stuck on an airplane in Vancouver because customs agents were missing in action, their hotel in Edmonton lost power, Wi-Fi and ... water and they arrived in Minnesota without any luggage.
It's safe to say the Predators just wanted to get home, preferably with two points in custody.
But it was the Wild that struck not once but twice in the first period.
Granlund got things going just 2:18 into the game with his first goal in 10 games. He tucked a beauty past Pekka Rinne after Jordan Schroeder, subbing in for Koivu as second-line center, came away with the puck along the boards and found red-hot Jason Zucker.
Zucker fed Granlund down low alone. Granlund scored his 11th goal, extended his point streak to a career-best seven games and picked up his 25th point in 22 games.
Five minutes later, a heating-up Pominville sniped a 2-0 lead after an Erik Haula feed in the right circle. Pominville has two goals and four assists in the past five games.
One night after scored the game-winning goal, having two assists and being a plus-4 on his 32nd birthday, Ryan Suter also picked up his 30th point on the goal. That gave the highest-scoring team in the Western Conference a league-high seven players with 30 points.
The Predators looked sluggish early. During one shift, the Wild spent 80 seconds buzzing in the offensive zone and were able to change two of their forwards despite the long change. But the Predators picked up their play and Kuemper had to battle to get the Wild out of the first period with its 2-0 lead intact.
He did, making 10 saves. But just 2:25 into the second, the Wild started showing signs of sloppiness and Neal cut the Wild lead in half. The goal came after he got away with a sly trip on Eric Staal and 10 seconds after Suter and Zucker collided after a faceoff.
