“It’s more painful going home when you get outplayed and are not there,” Gustavsson said. “Today, we were there, and, yeah, we played the right way.”

For the fifth consecutive game and seventh time in their past eight, the Wild gave up the first goal, this time getting behind 12:16 into the first after Gabriel Vilardi batted in a puck at the side of the Wild net.

By 12:38, Winnipeg was up 2-0 on a play indicative of how little puck luck the Wild have had during their skid: A shot going wide bounced in off an unsuspecting Vladislav Namestnikov.

“We need to get off to better starts,” Gustavsson said. “We can’t be down two goals, three goals.”

But erasing a two-goal deficit has become old hat for the Wild.

After doing that three times before falling 6-5 in overtime to the San Jose Sharks on Sunday, they rallied again in the second period.