It would be easy for the Minnesota Wild to get down in the dumps at this time of year. January is cold and gloomy, and the injury bug seems to have gotten its own locker room stall inside the home team’s room at Xcel Energy Center. But in the face of outrageous fortune, the Wild have chosen to fight. On Tuesday they lost a lead and lost another key player, but stormed back to beat the St. Louis Blues for the third time this season, fueled by a goal and an assist by Jake Middleton in a 6-4 win. “You go one of two ways when you hit adversity,” Wild defenseman Zach Bogosian said. “Obviously, you can back down, or you can rise to the occasion. I thought that’s what the guys did tonight.” Trailing by a pair in the second period, Minnesota battled back to tie, then got Matt Boldy’s dramatic game-winner off a cross-ice feed from Mats Zuccarello. It was the sixth win in the past seven games for Minnesota, but it came with a price, as standout defenseman Brock Faber left the game midway through the first period with an upper body injury and did not return. Wild coach John Hynes did not have an update on Faber’s condition after the game, but he offered praise for all of his team for a gritty win. “There’s times where everything’s clicking and everything’s going well, but it still comes down to your competitive nature, and most often than not, that’s the number one determining factor in winning, and we’ve been able to have that,” Hynes said. “Whether we’ve had guys in the lineup or out of the lineup, the competitive nature of our group, and I think the mental toughness to understand that it’s not gonna be easy and you gotta find different ways to win. You gotta play well with the lead, you gotta play well in a tie game. You gotta be able to come from behind. And in all those situations we just keep trekking along as we go here to try to find ways to do it.” Marc-Andre Fleury came on in relief of Filip Gustavsson in the second period and stopped all 15 shots he faced, including a pair of dramatic sweeping glove saves in the third period as St. Louis pushed for the equalizer. Middleton, who had missed the previous 11 games after suffering a hand injury early in a lopsided loss to Edmonton on Dec. 12, returned to the ice and returned to the score sheet just 92 seconds later, assisting on Bogosian’s blast from the blue line that gave the Wild a lead before many fans had even settled into their seats. “Yeah, the vibes are high, everyone’s feeling good,” Middleton said. “Confidence, we talk about that a lot. If we could buy it, we’d all be tremendous, but we’ve earned it up to now halfway through the year, and we’re feeling good about it.” It was Bogosian’s third goal of the season, and his first in exactly two months. He last scored on Nov. 7 in a 5-2 win at San Jose. Less than a minute later, the Wild doubled their lead on a crazy scramble in the offensive zone. Zuccarello made contact with St. Louis goalie Jordan Binnington, and at least one Blues defender chose to throw punches at Zuccarello rather than defend. Binnington got back into position, albeit without his stick, and was square to the play when Merrill’s rising shot caught the upper corner for a 2-0 Wild lead. But the early deficit seemed to awaken the Blues, who tested Gustavsson again and again later in the first, getting a goal back to only trail by one at the first intermission. That was not the worst thing that happened to the Wild in the opening period, as Faber left the game midway through the period and did not return. Playing with five defenders, the Wild surrendered a trio of goals in the opening five minutes of the second period as the Blues forcefully turned the tables. After Robert Thomas put St. Louis ahead 4-2 with 15:27 left in the middle frame, Gustavsson was lifted and replaced by Fleury. Gustavsson finished with 14 saves on 18 shots. Joel Eriksson Ek got the Wild, and the crowd, back into things near the midway point of the game, snapping a low shot past Binnington to make it a one-goal game again. For Eriksson Ek, it was his fifth point in the past four games after returning from a lengthy absence due to injury. After Middleton tied the game early in the third, Boldly got his second goal in as many games. St. Louis pulled Binnington with 3:20 left and peppered the Wild net before Marcus Johansson’s empty-net goal sealed the win. “There was a lot of moments where we needed to bear down more,” Blues coach Jim Montgomery said. “And, you know, we need that kind of, I call it grit – you gotta want to win that battle so you can move pucks forward. So that you an either live another day or produce some offense going the other way. Tonight this is something new for me. I didn’t like how  we handled the adversity today.” Binnignton finished with 20 saves for the Blues. The Wild’s two-game homestand concludes on Thursday as they face the Colorado Avalanche for the first time this season.