ST. PAUL, Minn. — Stewing on the Blackhawks' bench Friday night at the Xcel Energy Center as the final seconds of a 4-2 loss to the Wild ticked off, coach Joel Quenneville's scowl said it all.

To paraphrase: "#!#%&$#!"

Quenneville looked furious. If only his team remembered how to play that way.

"Tough building,'' Quenneville said after the game, his mood barely better.

Since the Hawks exhaled after taking a 2-0 series lead, the Wild have made it look easy on home ice. This was not the response the Blackhawks had in mind after losing Game 3. This was a return to enigmatic status Chicago endured in the first two losses to the Blues.

What happened to the team that won six in a row?

"It starts with the foundation of our game," Jonathan Toews said. "They worked for everything they got.''

The Hawks didn't, and Toews openly admitted the Hawks' failure to match the intensity of a Wild team that benefited emotionally from the return of forward Matt Cooke. Without consulting the French judge, Cooke deserved high marks for his routine with a performance that increased the degree of difficulty for the Hawks.

No, this wasn't figure skating, as Cooke sarcastically pointed out before Game 4. This was a hockey clinic courtesy of a Wild team that simply wanted it more than the defending Stanley Cup champions, who confounded us again.

"He's definitely an energy player,'' Toews said.

Cooke returned to the Wild lineup for the first time following a seven-game suspension and made his presence felt just as his pregame comments suggested. Asked at the morning skate about his reputation potentially making the Blackhawks wary, Cooke sounded as unrepentant and ornery as ever.

"Obviously, I don't want to see anyone get hurt, but you also don't want this to be a figure skating contest out there,'' Cooke said. "It's something I've tried to pride myself on, that you can play physical without being at risk.''

The way Cooke impacted the outcome, suddenly it seems risky to assume anything about what has become a best-of-three series. Cooke was as good for the Wild as Michal Rozsival was bad for the Hawks. The veteran troublemaker came out wreaking havoc, flying around with physicality the Wild had missed in his absence. At the 7-minute, 24-second mark, Cooke announced his return loudly by picking Rozsival and feeding Justin Fontaine for the Wild's first goal.

The Wild fed off his presence by playing with increased pace and urgency, two things the Hawks supposedly had committed to finding during their three days between games. They're still looking.

Patrick Kane wondered aloud during the break whether the Hawks had become overconfident. Duncan Keith acknowledged the Hawks lacked a killer instinct. The way Quenneville, the mad scientist of hockey, went back into the laboratory to experiment with new line combinations, the Hawks left the impression they were the ones trailing the series.

Quenneville shifted Ben Smith onto the top line with Toews and Bryan Bickell after the Toews-Bickell-Marian Hossa line excelled. Then in the second period, Quenneville tried Joakim Nordstrom with Toews and Bickell. By the third, he practically was pulling names out of a hat.

To say things started shakily for the Blackhawks would be an understatement. They didn't manage a shot on goal until the 6:20 mark.

Then Patrick Sharp skated around Mikko Koivu trying to make something happen in the final minute before intermission. And something did. Sharp used his speed to get a look from the bottom of the right wing circle, an odd angle, and fired a shot that slithered through the legs of Wild goalie Ilya Bryzgalov. But any momentum the Hawks generated from Sharp's goal was left in the dressing room between periods.

They came out for the second period again unable to match the Wild's relentlessness. Meanwhile, Jason Pominville made it 2-1 with a goal off goalie Corey Crawford's skate from an impossible angle behind the net. The Hawks looked on, dumbfounded. Their stupor continued until the 6:28 mark of the second when Michal Handzus redirected a Brent Seabrook slap shot to renew hope and suck the life out of the building.

The silence lasted 44 seconds.

Then the Wild caught the Hawks in a clumsy line change — and Crawford napping — as Nino Niederreiter fired the puck past Crawford's glove hand. You can fault the line change for creating confusion or Rozsival for failing to defend, but Crawford deserved the brunt of the blame for the Wild's third goal. Derisive chants of "CRAW-FORD!" bounced off the walls. Even the staunchest Crawford defender would agree that he needs to make that stop.

Even fans with the blindest loyalty can see the Wild outplayed and outworked the Hawks for the second straight game to make this a series.