Can Wild’s hard lessons in losing someday help them win?

DENVER — The Wild’s second round playoff series, and their season, had only been over for maybe 30 minutes and the visitors’ locker room at Ball Arena was quiet.

Equipment trucks were headed for the team bus and eventually back to Minnesota. Hockey tape was being balled up and tossed. A dozen or so pizza boxes were mostly untouched.

At his locker stall, with a crowd of reporters around him, Matt Boldy said this was a lesson. Few classroom experiences can be as painful as losing a 3-0 lead and having your season end in overtime, but Boldy spoke of learning, nonetheless.

“Unfortunately, you’ve gotta learn how to lose to learn how to win,” he said with a nod toward the jubilant Colorado locker room. “That team over there has done that. You know, they’ve lost, they’ve gone through ups and downs, and you know, they’ve learned how to lose and learned how to win.”

The Wild did a good amount of the right kind of learning in the past five weeks or so. The generally tight-lipped Boldy admitted that this season was a step forward. They won a playoff series — something that no Wild fan had seen in more than a decade. It was probably way too early to take all of that in, but not too soon to begin learning from the experience.

“I think, you know, that’s what we have to do,” Boldy said. “We have to use this experience to benefit us, and, you know, start to realize that, you know, with the group we have, that this is a great chance for us to take another step in the right direction.”

After a dud in Game 4, which could have left the series tied, the Wild looked like a new team in the opening 20 minutes on Wednesday. They were the aggressors. They put pucks in deep and then went and retrieved them. They took a lead before many full-throated Avalanche fans had even been seated.

At the first intermission, they had a 3-0 lead and it could’ve been more. An apparent Michael McCarron goal came off the board after the puck went in off his arm. Still, they were getting offense and defense, and Colorado had switched goalies. It looked very much like a sixth game, back in St. Paul on Friday, could be next on the agenda.

From that point on, for the most part, it was all Colorado. The Wild still led by two goals with less than four minutes left in regulation, but they were hanging on. Clinging even. While coach John Hynes and his players denied going into a defensive shell, the simple fact is that Avalanche replacement goalie did not have to stop double digit shots in the final 40 minutes and overtime to reach the Western Conference final.