TORONTO — There were parts of Saturday night’s game against the Maple Leafs that the Wild liked, such as not falling apart when they fell behind 4-1 early in the second period. And the play of center Marco Rossi, who scored his first NHL goal, and Brock Faber.

Still, after a 7-4 loss at Scotiabank Arena, in their second game of the season, the Wild were already looking at making changes, specifically on defense.

Auston Matthews scored his second hat trick in as many games this season and the scoring-rich Toronto Maple Leafs poured it on late with three third-period goals to hand the Wild their first loss of the season.

The pairing of Jake Middleton and Alex Goligoski — the latter filling in for injured captain Jared Spurgeon — struggled against the Leafs’ high-powered offense, finishing a combined minus-5.

“To be honest with you, we’re gonna make some adjustments with our pairs,” Wild head coach Dean Evason said afterward. “We’ve already talked about it.”

Spurgeon suffered an upper body injury in a preseason game Oct. 4 in Chicago and hasn’t yet returned to skating. Goligoski filled in admirably in the season opener, a 2-0 victory over Florida at Xcel Energy Center, but the veteran struggled on Saturday.

But so did the rest of the defense, forwards included. Gustavsson, who stopped 41 shots last Thursday, was peppered with 33 on Saturday and under constant duress.

“Duplications, missed coverages, penalty kill, obviously just an undisciplined game by us,” Goligoski said.

His tripping penalty led to Tyler Bertuzzi’s power play goal early in the second period, which gave the Maple Leafs a 4-1 lead, and his unsportsmanlike conduct penalty 6 minutes, 43 seconds into the third period killed the Wild’s momentum after they had rallied to within 4-3 on Rossi’s first NHL goal.

“Spurge is a big piece of our team, right?” Evason said. “(Goligoski) played really well the other night, and all our D played really well the other night. Brock Faber can’t be our best player every night. It’s wonderful that he is, but we really need other people stepping up in Spurgey’s absence.”

Faber was one of the best players on the ice Saturday, finishing plus-3 with two shots on goal, a blocked attempt and two hits. But generally, the defense was stressed by Toronto’s talented forwards.

The Wild had their chances, and took a 1-0 lead when Ryan Hartman redirected a shot on goal by Kirill Kaprizov from the blue line, off his own skate, at 9:32 of the first period. But the Leafs scored the next four goals, and Minnesota never caught up.

Matt Boldy made it 4-2 just 34 seconds after Bertuzzi’s goal, and Rossi’s goal — which he poked in using the shaft of his stick — made it 4-3 with 5 minutes left in the second period. But that was all the offense could muster despite some big scoring chances, including a one-timer by Kaprizov that missed an open net.

And at the other end, the Wild couldn’t stem the tide.

“We had some chances in the third to tie it up, and just got away from it, and they’re a team that makes you pay,” said Marcus Foligno, who had a point-blank shot at a goal in the third period bounce away.

“Against these highly skilled teams, we’ve got to do a better job of playing our game — and that’s energy, that’s grinding,” Foligno said.

Foligno fought former teammate Ryan Reaves after the Toronto checker leveled Freddie Gaudreau in the first period. Gaudreau stayed on his knees after the hit, and left the bench for a while, but said afterward he just had the wind knocked out of him. He returned to finish the game.

So did Pat Maroon after being cut by a puck.

No so Matt Boldy, who took a big hit by Morgan Reilly after Matthews’ third goal at 10:25 of the third period and appeared to suffer an upper body injury. He was worked on by athletic trainer John Worley on the bench but wasn’t able to return.

“When a guy doesn’t come back in a game, then it’s obviously more serious than we want it to be,” Evason said. “We’ll see how he is tonight and tomorrow morning.”

Losing Boldy would be a tough challenge for the Wild. The forward has been one of Minnesota’s best in both of its games this season, and the Wild were already down to 12 forwards when the season began. They called defenseman Dakota Mermis from Iowa before a trip that concludes Tuesday at Montreal but are so close to the salary cap — by $818,000 at season’s onset — that they can’t afford to call up a forward and keep Mermis.

“We’ll see what’s going on with the guys,” Foligno said. “Maybe two days’ rest can help us. But, yeah, hopefully it’s nothing long term. We have some guys out and we don’t want to be battling the injury bug early. But we (also) have that mentality of ‘next guy up.’ ”

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