What now?

Before the Avalanche-Minnesota Wild game Saturday night, Colorado general manager Joe Sakic indicated a major deal involving any of the team’s “core” players by the Monday trading deadline was unlikely.

He also looked beyond Monday and said the plan included not only holding on to Ryan O’Reilly but attempting to sign him to a contract extension this summer and avoid the soap-opera intrigue of O’Reilly approaching free agency during next season.

Then the Avalanche went out and fell 3-1 to the Wild.

Avs Mailbag: Pose a question for Terry Frei, Mike Chambers

The loss wasn’t the absolute end of the Colorado playoff hopes, but close to it. A chance to get within four points of the final wild-card playoff spot in the Western Conference turned into an embarrassment on several levels and left the Avalanche eight points behind the Wild.

It was a tossup as to which was more embarrassing for the Avalanche — its 0-for-7 showing on the power play or winger Cody McLeod’s theatrics as the clock wound down, when he went after Minnesota’s Mikael Granlund and ended up in a fight with Charlie Coyle.

Whether it was a “let ’em know you’re there” response to Sean Bergenheim’s hit on Nathan MacKinnon midway through the third period that left the Avs’ second-year forward with an apparent broken nose was beside the point.

The whole thing was bush league, and to a point I’m even including in that the somewhat hypocritical squealing response from the affronted Wild, which — after all — employs Matt Cooke.

I addressed the whole thing extensively in an All Things Avs blog entry Sunday morning, so I’ll move on here.

Sakic said all the right things Saturday, and I don’t mean he was politically correct or clichéd as much as his stance made sense. As flawed as the Avs are, and as badly as they need another upper-end defenseman to partner with Erik Johnson or anchor the second pairing, it would be lunacy to simply make deals at the deadline — especially as “buyers” or “renters” rather than “sellers” of expendable veterans — for the sake of being able to say “See?”

Absolutely, the thunderously disappointing production from Matt Duchene, O’Reilly, Gabriel Landeskog and Nathan MacKinnon for much of this season sounds alarms. Even if that didn’t, I’ve long said the same thing Sakic did Saturday night — no sane GM should rule out trading anyone. But there’s a difference between keeping an open mind and panicking.

It too often comes back to haunt in this league.

The other drama is the curious case of MacKinnon, who suddenly went from the high of his first career hat trick to being benched at Dallas in the third period and overtime Friday, and then playing on the third and fourth lines against the Wild — even before injury was added to the insult.

Before the game Saturday, Roy’s explanation that he must have “lost” track of MacKinnon at Dallas wasn’t credible. He knew I didn’t buy it, and I knew exactly what he was doing. But when MacKinnon spent much of the night against the Wild skating with Paul Carey, just up from Lake Erie, and Marc-Andre Cliche, a penalty-killing and checking specialist who can’t put the puck in Cherry Creek Reservoir from the top of the dam, that made it clear that MacKinnon was in the doghouse.

Roy parried questions about it after the game and MacKinnon quickly left the open part of the dressing room with his nose stuffed up with tissue paper to get treatment.

This is getting messy.

Should the Avs do something? If that “hockey trade” Sakic cited that could make the team better in the long run is out there, of course they should. But it would be unwise to either: a) overreact and blow this core up; or b) make a deal just to mollify the impatient indoctrinated in the NHL myth that doing something is always better than doing nothing at all.

Terry Frei: tfrei@ denverpost.com or twitter.com/TFrei