Hockey is a 60 minute game.

That's a pretty obvious statement to anyone who watches or follows the game on a regular basis but Minnesota Wild fans received a cruel reminder of that on Tuesday night.

With a 4-1 lead in the 3rd period Minnesota gave up four goals in the final 10:38 of play losing to Nashville 5-4. More importantly the Wild lose two points they really could have used because the loss came in regulation.

At the start of the game Minnesota looked to pick up right where they left off at the All Star break as Dany Heatley scored the first two goals of the game giving the Wild a 2-0 lead.

With goals by Cal Clutterbuck 1:29 into the 2nd and Kyle Brodziak 16 seconds into the 3rd period Minnesota looked like they were well on their way to their 3rd straight win.

However Nashville showed how resilient of a hockey team they are and kept pressing away eventually pulling within one goal with 3:21 to play in the game.

Once Nashville got within one goal Minnesota tightened up trying to hold on to the lead. That lasted twenty-one seconds before Nashville tied it on a Mike Fisher goal. Fisher would also come through a little over two minutes later scoring the game winner on a puck Josh Harding admits he should have stopped.

Now most people who know me view me as an eternal optimist. This is the part where you expect me to tell you this loss wasn't that bad.

I can't do that here. This was a bad loss.

What I can give you is a silver lining and that is this, it's better a loss like this happens against a team like Nashville who looks to be a lock for the postseason than against a team like Colorado or Dallas who Minnesota is battling for the final playoff spot.

Coincidentally the next two games for the Wild are in Denver & Dallas. Right now Minnesota is holding down the 8th spot in the West by one point over both the Avalanche and Stars.

I feel you can't judge how bad a loss was just by how the team played. You also have to take in how the team responds to a bad loss in the next game as well.

After the loss to Toronto two weeks ago I felt the Wild needed to get six points in the next five games to stay in the playoff picture. They were able to get four points with wins over Dallas and Colorado before the All-Star break.

Now they face the Avalanche and Stars on back to back nights. I believe for the Wild to be playing hockey in April they need to come away with at least three points in these two games

We'll find out tonight in Denver tonight how bad Tuesday's loss really was.