The Minnesota Wild: First place in December, out of the playoffs in March

It was only a little over three months ago that the Minnesota Wild had the best record in hockey, sitting on top of the NHL standings with a 20-7-3 record after a 4-1 win over the Phoenix Coyotes, extending their winning streak to a season-high seven straight games.

Today, the Wild are officially eliminated from playoff contention after yet another loss on Sunday evening, getting blanked by the Washington Capitals 3-0, the eighth time they've been shutout this season.

It will be the fourth straight season Minnesota has missed the postseason.

Even worse, according to the folks at Wild blog, Hockey Wilderness, Minnesota is the first team to be in first place on December 1, and then miss the postseason. Hey, if you're going to lose, you might as well do so in historic fashion.

The cold hard reality for Minnesota is that its team simply wasn't that good to begin with, and for the first two months of the season it was consistently bailed out by the goaltending duo of Niklas Backstrom and Josh Harding. Once their play leveled off a bit in net and was no longer their to mask Minnesota's flaws (mainly the worst offense in the league), the bottom fell out and the Wild now find themselves with the third-worst record in the league, and stand a real chance of finishing with one of the bottom two records at the end of the regular season.

Injuries to forwards Mikko Koivu (by far their best overall player) and Pierre-Marc Bouchard have definitely hurt the team offensively, but even with them in the lineup they weren't scoring enough as a team, or generating enough offensive chances, to maintain their winning pace at the start of the season. When they went down, the lack of any secondary scoring on the roster became pretty obvious, and as of Monday the Wild are averaging just 2.01 goals per game, by far the worst mark in the NHL.

The good news for Minnesota is now they have an increased chance of landing the No. 1 overall pick in the draft lottery, and Nail Yakupov might help boost any offense...



So there's always that to maybe look forward to.

For more hockey news, rumors and analysis, follow @EyeOnHockey and @agretz on Twitter and like us on Facebook.