In the wake of losing a second consecutive game in regulation for the first time all season on Wednesday — the last NHL team to have held out that long — the Wild earned the right to express confidence that their recent play is a brief lapse and not a concerning trend.

"No season is perfect, right?" goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury, who gave up six goals in 33 shots, said after the 6-1 loss to the Panthers. "Right now, we're seeing a little adversity, and we've gotta find a way out of it and get back on the right track here."

Fleury may be correct, given that the Wild (20-8-4) have weathered almost every situation thrown at them already this season, including injuries that lately have been mounting. But a deeper look into some advanced numbers shows where the Wild are potentially vulnerable to a prolonged regression — as well as singling out one injury they better hope is only minor. I talked about the state of the team on Thursday's Daily Delivery podcast.

The concern starts here: The Wild's special teams have been poor this season. Their power play is tied for 19th in the league with a 19.8% success rate. Their penalty kill continues to be a source of frustration, ranking third from the bottom in allowing opponents to score 29.9% of the time.

The Wild largely have made up for that by being an excellent 5-on-5 team, outscoring opponents 65-48 in those situations.

But here's the problem with that: Per Hockey Reference, the Wild are actually more of an average 5-on-5 team when it comes to expected goals scored and allowed. In those categories, which factor in shot quality among other things, the Wild are expected to have scored 61.7 goals while allowing 62.4.

So their actual goal differential 5-on-5 vs. their expected goal differential 5-on-5 is plus-18, the highest mark in the league. The next biggest gap is plus-14.

And most of that gap is accounted for in goals allowed (62.4 expected, 48 actual). And the majority of that better-than-expected goaltending has come from Filip Gustavsson, who by almost every objective measure has played like one of the best goalies in the league so far this season.

The Gus Bus is currently sidelined, though, with what has only been termed a "lower body" injury that hopefully is short term.

Even when considering the MVP-caliber play of Kirill Kaprizov and other important reasons for the Wild's unexpectedly strong start this season, the dramatic improvement from the Wild's goalies this season has to be the No. 1 factor in their turnaround from a season ago.

After all, last year they gave up 14 MORE goals at 5-on-5 than expected, while this year it's 14 fewer so far.

Unless they fix their special teams, the Wild will need to continue to overperform at 5-on-5.

And unless Gustavsson returns soon and plays at the level he has established already this season, they are going to have a hard time doing that.