"If, at the end of the season, the Wild are preparing for their first playoff series since 2007-08, this one won't matter so much. It will just be one data point in a set of 82, another moving average on the chart of a team whose stock seems prone to big swings.

But if they're sitting at home in April? Oh, how Tuesday night's 3-1 loss to the Columbus Blue Jackets will hurt.

The Wild came into the game looking as if they had rediscovered a blueprint for winning through a 3-1-1 stretch that included seven points against teams chasing them for the final playoff spot in the Western Conference. They left it having missed a chance to beat the worst team in the league, and they reverted to some of the problems they mostly seemed to have fixed. "