Say what you want about the loser point (which is probably that it’s terrible… because it is), but it sure has benefitted the Minnesota Wild of late, as it has dropped each of its last two crucial games, but only after dragging the contests into “Points for Everybody” territory.
Without those two recent charity points, Minnesota would be in a serious dogfight right now for playoff contention, but getting to extra frames has left the Wild above the mess, at least for now. Eric Staal scoring his 40th goal late in that extremely tough-sledding type of game in Nashville on Tuesday allowed Minnesota to skate away from a series of three difficult games in four days with four out of six points.