The “helpless” feeling of waiting three days between games that Wild head coach Bruce Boudreau described on Monday has been amplified with Colorado and Arizona winning games Minnesota wanted them to lose.
Arizona won Tuesday night and Colorado escaped Vegas with a 4-3 win Wednesday night, pushing the Wild further down in the wild-card race with just 10 days left in the regular season.
Entering play Thursday, Colorado controls the second wild-card spot with 83 points. Arizona is close behind with 81 points and the Wild sit further back with 79 points.
That helpless feeling Boudreau talked about… it’s worse since Minnesota plays at Vegas on Friday night while at the same time Colorado goes up against Arizona. Even if the Wild win, one of the teams they’re chasing is going to earn two points.
The best the Wild can do is beat Vegas to get to 81 points and hope Arizona tops Colorado in regulation. That would create a tie at 83 points between Colorado and Arizona. Fingers crossed that that’s the outcome.
Worst case scenario is if the Avalanche win in regulation and jump to 85 points. Couple that with a Wild loss in Vegas and all of a sudden Minnesota is six points out with just four games to go.
According to the updated playoff probabilities from Hockey Reference, the Wild now have a microscopic 3.7 percent chance to sneak into the playoffs.
Hold on tight, Wild fans. It could be a very stressful 10 days between now and the end of the regular season on April 6.
