The Avalanche remains in third place in the Central Division despite Saturday's 2-1 shootout loss to Minnesota at the Pepsi Center, but the Wild has rallied for three points in the last two meetings because Colorado couldn't hold late third-period leads.
Nino Niederreiter tipped in Ryan Suter's point shot with 3:53 left in the third period to tie Saturday's game 1-1 before Zach Parise and Mikko Koivu scored against Avalanche goalie Semyon Varlamov in the shootout.
Avalanche defensemen Nate Guenin and Tyson Barrie were on the ice when the tying goal was scored. Guenin wasn't able to clear the zone when he had a chance and Varlamov was screened when Suter took the shot.
"He (Guenin) made a mistake and no one's perfect," coach Patrick Roy said. "I don't have problems with plays like this."
When the teams met Nov. 30, the Wild scored twice in the final 3:27 of regulation to wipe out a 2-0 deficit before falling 3-2 in a shootout. Koivu scored the tying goal with 4.3 seconds left in that game.
The Avalanche did pick up a point and remains third in division with a 21-9-1 record and 43 points. The Wild also has 43 points but has fewer wins (19) and has played four more games.
"We're not going to win every overtime and every shootout," said Matt Duchene, who opened the tiebreaker with a goal against Josh Harding, who made glove saves against PA Parenteau and Ryan O'Reilly. "They have talented players and they were able to convert. Hopefully we can get a couple wins against Dallas this week."
The Avalanche has a home-and-home series with the Stars starting Monday at the Pepsi Center. The Stars are fifth in the division with 35 points in 31 games.
The Avalanche scored its only goal at 10:48 of the second period when Cory Sarich took a shot from just inside the blue line and the puck went into the net off Max Talbot's skate.
"We thought maybe the bounces are going to start coming, but they have a good goaltender and an extremely stingy team and they want to play 1-0 type games," Duchene said. "That's their strength. Our strength is speed and offensive hockey, and it's steady defense. I thought our defense was outstanding tonight. They didn't have many good chances and the goal they scored was from the blue line and it hit something.
"You give up a point shot, especially a wrister, and very rarely does it go in the net. Varly stops that 99 times out of a hundred if there's no screen. They obviously had a good screen and it hit something and went in. I thought we played a pretty good hockey game.
"It's a very hard game to play. You have to pretty much will yourself to get anything going. We don't like to play that type of 1-1 hockey game and you have to learn how to win those. I think we did a good job in trying to. If Harding isn't as good as he is, we score more goals."
Said Parenteau: "It was a grind. I thought it was open for the first 10 minutes of the game. I thought there was a lot of chances on both sides, but then it came back to normal pretty quickly against Minnesota. They shut it down, they controlled the neutral zone, but we have to find more ways to generate offense, especially when we play these guys. We got to grind a little more and tonight was no different.…
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It would help if the Avalanche could get something out of its fizzling power play. The Avalanche went 0-for-2 Saturday and is in an 0-for-26 drought in the past 10 games.
"Obviously I would like to see our power play scoring goals," Roy said. "We had a couple good chances, but there's nothing to show for that. We're going to have to bear down on our chances on the power play. It's time for the power play to click, there's no doubt about it."
Roy credited the Wild for being resilient.
"It was two fluky goals," he said. "We missed the net on ours, it hit a skate and went in and they had the same thing, a tip in front of the net. They were not pretty goals, but at the same time it's part of the game. It's too bad because we didn't give them much and coming at the end of the game is when they scored that goal. They were resilient and Minnesota deserves a lot of credit for it."
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Varlamov and Harding each made 26 saves through regulation and the 5-minute overtime ... The Avalanche was 17-0-0 when scoring first before Saturday, 18-0-0 when leading after two periods and 5-0 in games that went beyond regulation -- 3-0 in overtime and 2-0 in shootouts.
Defenseman Jan Hejda played a strong game after missing the previous four with a sprained right knee. He logged 25:50 in ice time with one shot, one blocked shot and three hits ... Defense partner Erik Johnson played a team-high 27:52 with three shots, one blocked shot and two hits ... Wild defenseman Ryan Suter, who apparently never gets tired, played 32:51 with his assist, two shots, two blocked shots and one hit.