There were some bright spots in the Wild performance last night, but in the end it was the same old story of the 2018-19 Minnesota Wild. Another home defeat and the lights dimming further on their playoff hopes.

The story last night in the 1-0 shutout loss to Nashville, was the numerous scoring opportunities that were sent wide of the net. If there is one thing more annoying than shots that can't hit the target, I'm not sure what that may be.

I realize that players are shooting for holes, and that is all well and good but when a team is struggling to score goals the game plan must be simplified to getting pucks to the net and scoring goals off rebounds, deflections, crazy bounces, whatever way they van manufacture them. Not by being so precise that they shots go wide and worse carom around the glass and out of the zone in many cases.

Ryan Donato was again the Wild's best player and the line of Donato, Kunin, and Greenway were generating chances most of the night.

Some bright spots in an otherwise disappointing second half of the season as the Wild look to the future with the playoffs quickly becoming a long shot now.

The injuries turned out to be more than the Wild could overcome with no depth in which to draw from. First Matt Dumba, then Mikko Koivu, and now Parise out their just was not enough in the tank. I purposely left out Joel Eriksson Ek when listing the injuries because his injury may actually be the one that did the most damage to the Wild playoff hopes.

JEE was playing a compete game since his latest recall and was a focal point of the new look Wild lineup since the trade deadline. Not to diminish the loss of Dumba or Koivu, but they have been out for some time and the team was geared up for moving forward without them. Eriksson Ek on the other hand was just bursting on the scene and taking on a much bigger role and responsibility on the changing Wild roster.

Injuries are part of the game and in the end there are no excuses, but the observation here is that it just turned out that the Wild ran out of scoring depth within the organization to replace the production lost due to injury.

A few days off before the trip to Vegas and Arizona this weekend. Nothing short of a five game win streak now will see the lights go out on the season a week from Saturday in Dallas.

Follow me on Twitter @dwallace17

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