CALGARY, Alberta — Not too long ago the Wild couldn’t stop losing.
Now the opposite is happening: They keep winning.
The Wild aren’t on a streak as long as the seven-game skid that plummeted them to near the bottom of the NHL and precipitated a coaching change, but they’re more than halfway there.
They’ve rattled off four consecutive victories after extinguishing the Flames 5-2 on Tuesday at Scotiabank Saddledome and will vie for No. 5 on Thursday when their Western Conference road trip resumes at Vancouver.
“When you go on losing streaks, you lose confidence,” Marcus Foligno said. “You really do. But it’s something when you get it back, you’ve gotta run with it, and I think we are.”
This surge is indicative of much more than confidence.
Sure, that’s a factor. Just ask Matt Boldy.
The winger hadn’t scored in 10 games when he finally capitalized last Tuesday vs. St. Louis. Since then, he has four goals in four games after potting a pair and adding an assist against Calgary.
“It’s a tough league when things aren’t going your way and you’re not playing confident, just not making plays, it’s hard,” Boldy said. “Guys are so good. Once you’re able to get one and get that relief, you can drop the shoulders a little bit and play with that confidence. It goes a long way.”
But the Wild are also tactically different, and it shows.
They spend much less time defending. They’re a handful in the neutral zone, where they feasted on turnovers by the Flames on Tuesday night. And their decisiveness on offense is jaw-dropping compared to how one-and-done they used to be when they were struggling.
Kirill Kaprizov had a whopping 16 shot attempts vs. Calgary and Joel Eriksson Ek eight.
Everyone was authoritative, and they didn’t rattle easily.
Twice the Flames trimmed their three-goal deficit to two, but the Wild retaliated each time.
“We needed to get faster,” Foligno said, “and that’s been our improvement.”
Speed is what coach John Hynes has emphasized in a week-plus on the job, and it’s a tweak that’s clicked with the group — so much so that it’s tough to understand how this is the same team that just last month lost for almost three weeks straight.
Apparently, winning can be contagious, too.
“They’ve gone through a tough time, and I think right now they want more,” Hynes said. “They want to continue to win. They want to get back to where I think as players they feel they’re a good enough team to be, and I’m honored to coach them.
“The locker room is great. The leadership is strong. They’re a hungry group. They’re coachable. So, they’ve made it really easy to come in and try to help them.”