DETROIT – The Detroit Red Wings’ playoff hopes are fading, and their runway is getting shorter. They’re desperately trying to regain the spark they had in late January when they were briefly atop their division.

Sunday’s 5-4 loss to the Minnesota Wild at Little Caesars Arena capped a damaging weekend of back-to-back regulation defeats.

“We got to find a way to not let it weigh on us,” Andrew Copp said. “We 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. Got to find a way to have fun with it, play free. … We got to try and channel that fun and that jam.”

Asked if the “outside noise” has crept into the room, Copp said, “It feels a little heavy for sure. You guys (media) have jobs to do, fans have, you know, like, that it is what it is. That’s on us, to not let it creep in. This day and age it’s pretty hard.”

The Wild scored four unanswered goals in the second period to take a 4-1 lead. The Red Wings responded with three goals in the third before Karil Kaprizov scored a power-play goal with 1:51 remaining to cap a hat trick and snap a tie.

“Outside noise, if we’re reading and buying into all of that, then shame on us,” coach Todd McLellan said. “Maybe that’s part of our mental resilience. We can’t worry about what goes on out there. We got to worry about what goes on in there. We had a little talk between the second and third, and that was made quite clear to them. And then we come out and respond. But the consistency, we’re like a wave. We crest and then crash, crest and then crash. And it has to change.”

The Red Wings (40-29-8) have five games remaining and the next two – home vs. Columbus on Tuesday and Philadelphia on Thursday will go a long way toward determining their playoff fate.

They began the day tied with Ottawa, Philadelphia and Columbus for the last wild card spot in the East with 88 points, one more than Washington.

“We’re not going to cry ourselves to sleep tonight and bail on the last five games,” Copp said. “It’s not the DNA in the room. It’s not the DNA of our profession in general. So, it’s going to suck tonight. After a back-to-back, we 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. We’ve gotten a little bit of help lately. We play two of the teams that we’re going against here in the next week, and those will determine it.

“Just trying to have that even keel mentality as much as possible, but when your confidence is wavering, it gets harder and harder to do that.”

McLellan doesn’t believe it’s a crisis of confidence.

“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 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.”