Wild recap part 2: Steps backward, when going forward seemed easy

Let me address how this Minnesota Wild season should be viewed and the spin some people have chosen to put on it. Quickly after the playoff exit, there was a consensus that the Wild had a good season because of a "look at how far they've come" mentality, thinking back to digging out of a December/January collapse.

This is ridiculous.

Yes, the second-half comeback after the trade of Devan Dubnyk was remarkable. Yes, no one thought this team was playoff-bound in mid-January. Yes, this was one of the greatest stories out of the NHL this season.

That awesome run from mid-January to the end of the season looks pretty meaningless now. Thought the #MNWild had a chance this year. Nope.

— John Kriesel (@johnkriesel) May 8, 2015

Here's your bottom line
But we must look at the bigger picture. The worst slump in franchise history should have never happened in the first place. The Wild took a step backward this year. Period.

It came off a year in 2013-14 in which the team won a playoff series and lost a six-gamer to Chicago after outplaying the Blackhawks for much of the series. This season, it was reasonable to expect the Wild to be a top contending team in this league. They should have been striving for a division title or to be one of the leading teams, not a wildcard.

Their core group of players had another year of experience behind them. This was the year to make a mark and move forward.

Let's not forget either that if the Wild wouldn't have taken their feet off the pedal in the season's final week, they could have passed the Blackhawks and gotten a top-three spot, which came with home-ice advantage. Maybe that's not much of a difference, but we will never know.

Chicago will now face Anaheim in the Western Conference Finals. Anaheim has only surrendered one game this postseason, and that was in overtime in Calgary. Here's something else I heard about the Wild's playoff fate this year: Well, they weren't going to get past Anaheim anyway.

In their heads
While I don't disagree with that, given the clutch talent and hard-hitting players Anaheim has, I think this isn't the key point. The Wild needed to beat Chicago, to show that they can do it. To show that they have it in them and that Chicago doesn't create a mental block for them.

Because now it does.

Yes, the longer the series went on, the more Tweets and comments I saw about comparing the Blackhawks/Wild playoffs to the Yankees/Twins. I didn't think so coming into the series, but now I think Chicago is in their heads.

We're going to keep hearing about these stats until the Wild changes the course to rewrite history a little bit. The Wild are 0-9 in Chicago in the postseason, the Wild are 3-12 against Chicago in the postseason. All Patrick Kane essentially has to do is breathe and he scores a goal against the Wild. The unflattering list can go on and on. And we'll hear about it again and again.

The frustrating aspect is that Chicago's stars are young and will continue to be around for Wild tormenting purposes. How can Minnesota compete with that? Against opposing straight shooters who are now commonly called "snipers" around these parts. I'm not sure how Minnesota counters that.