DETROIT — Todd McLellan tried to choose his words carefully when asked the about the second period that doomed his Detroit Red Wings on Sunday. But the message came out all the same.

The Red Wings had entered the period up 1-0 after scoring on their first shot of the game — a good way to start a crucial late-season game, which they entered in a four-way tie for the Eastern Conference’s final wild-card spot. But the visiting Minnesota Wild scored just 18 seconds into the second frame, kicking off a run of four goals in 12 and a half minutes to completely turn the game on its head.

“I guess to put it gently, really disappointing,” McLellan said. “(18) seconds in. We win a draw and we’re getting scored on because we — what word do I use — lollygag around and don’t advance the puck. So now it’s in our net, and our team right now, as soon as it doesn’t go our way, we crumble for a while. And then we pick ourselves up off the mat, but it’s too late. We did it again today. Pattern.”

That is the way it’s going right now for the Red Wings, whose 5-4 loss to the Wild Sunday was their sixth regulation loss in their last eight games and fourth straight defeat on home ice.

There were boos after that second period, as has become a fairly common occurrence at Little Caesars Arena lately. Everyone is frustrated by the way Detroit’s season has trended: the fans, the coach, and certainly the players too. Perhaps that is why McLellan made a point to note he was choosing his words as he spoke about the disastrous period.

As many opportunities as the Red Wings have missed over the last month, they remain within reach of a playoff spot with less than two weeks to play. They haven’t looked like a playoff team for the better part of the last month, though, and that creates some real dissonance between the big-picture frustrations over Detroit’s late-season slide and the team’s attempts to stay focused on the task at hand.

“We’ve got to find a way to not let it weigh on us,” Andrew Copp said after the game. “We’ve got to (find a way to) free ourselves up. As soon as you let the outside noise and you guys (media) start to impact what we’re doing in here, that’s when issues start to happen. So, got to find a way to have fun with it. Play free. Think of these as opportunities, instead of, ‘what’s going to happen?’ Little bit of that going on, and we’ve got to try and channel that fun and that jam, and we’ve got five games left.”

The fact there are only five games left is part of the mounting pressure, of course. If this were early January, with an upcoming break for players to reset and 30-plus games for them to find their footing, then a stretch like the Red Wings have had over the last month wouldn’t be quite the same lightning-rod topic. In fact, a similar instance happened with this same Red Wings team in November, when Detroit went 5-7-2. The Red Wings regrouped as goaltender John Gibson in particular started to find his game, though, and off they went.

The issue right now is urgency is rising quickly, with little time for a reset. With the stakes high and the margin for error small, all of that seems to be adding up.

You could see it in the way the Red Wings’ ugly second period spiraled on Saturday. After Detroit had won a center-ice face-off eight seconds in to the period, a strong play along the wall by Joel Eriksson-Ek sprung the Wild on a two-on-one that Matt Boldy buried to tie the game. Just over a minute later, the Wild scored again, with a point shot going off Kirill Kaprizov’s leg and in.

Six minutes after that, Detroit had just killed off a two-minute penalty — with Moritz Seider blocking a shot from former Red Wing Vladimir Tarasenko — only for Minnesota to keep the puck in at the line, then find Tarasenko at the back door to make it 3-1. And then an ill-timed defense change 12:32 in the period allowed Kaprizov to get loose on the rush and score again, putting the Red Wings in yet another three-goal deficit.

“I don’t think we stop the bleeding, when we start to bleed,” McLellan said. “Is that confidence? I don’t know. I think that’s mental fortitude, the ability to dig in and respond when it’s not going well. … We just have to stop the bleeding when it starts.”

It would be one thing if that was the whole story Sunday: a game that simply went off the rails, a bleed that wouldn’t stop. But in the third period, the Red Wings fought their way right back into the game.

First it was a point shot by recently-recalled rookie defenseman Axel Sandin-Pellikka that found a way in. Then a back-door finish by J.T. Compher. And then a backhand beauty by Patrick Kane to tie the game, all in a span of just over seven minutes. Just like that, the Red Wings were back in it.

Clearly, something sparked them — and when it did, they got back to where they all knew they needed to be.

“Sometimes it’s just one shift,” Copp said. “It’s one goal, and then it gets contagious. Winning is contagious, losing is contagious. I think (McLellan) said that. But you know, it just takes one thing to feel good about. And then it’s the next line, and then everyone starts feeling good about something. You’ve seen that happen to us a few times. Unfortunately it happens the other way, too, and that kind of happened in the second a little bit.”

If the two runs in either direction effectively cancelled each other out, Sunday’s game was ultimately decided in the final four minutes, when Kane was whistled for a trip on Quinn Hughes away from the play, giving the Wild a late power play. With that chance, Kaprizov buried a one-timer to complete his hat trick and give Minnesota the decisive goal — a back-breaking sequence after the push that had preceded it.

“It hurts,” McLellan said. “We get the comeback, and we take a penalty 150 feet from our net, not even in the play. It hurts.”

Sunday’s game began the Red Wings’ final homestand of the season. They will next face the Columbus Blue Jackets and Philadelphia Flyers — both direct rivals for that final playoff spot — before wrapping their home slate against the New Jersey Devils on Saturday and closing with two road games at Tampa and Florida. A win to kick it all off against Minnesota might have gone a long way toward propelling the Red Wings.

Instead, while they still have the late comeback to refer to, trying to replicate that same kind of spark they found in the third over their next 60 minutes on Tuesday, they’re again left to regroup while acutely aware time is running out.

“We don’t have a choice,” Copp said. “We’re not going to cry ourselves to sleep tonight and bail on the last five games. It’s just not the DNA in the room, it’s not the DNA of our profession in general. So, it’s going to suck tonight. Tomorrow’s an off day for us, after a back-to-back, regroup, and we’re going to come with the most amount of intensity and jam that we can bring on Tuesday. We’re not six feet under yet.”