Eight days ago, the Minnesota Twins were baseball’s hottest team and winners of 17 of 20 games.

After Monday night’s 12-3 loss at the Washington Nationals, the same club was mired in a seven-game slide so miserable that it sparked a players-only meeting.

“It’s easy to be a fun guy to be around when things are going good and when everything you’re hitting is falling and you’re just winning games,” Twins shortstop and two-time All-Star Carlos Correa said. “But when the tough times come, that’s when you know who people are. And it’s helpful to talk.”

Correa hit a two-run homer, the bright spot in another sluggish outing for an offense that has been the primary culprit, scoring only 12 runs during Minnesota’s free fall to within a game of the .500 mark.

Against soft-tossing Nats starter Mitchell Parker, manager Rocco Baldelli said the Twins (24-23) simply weren’t reacting.

“The guy just stood out there and threw off-speed pitches for four innings, and we didn’t do anything about it,” Baldelli said. “We continued to kind of wave at them and look for fastballs. Which today, they weren’t coming. Especially for the first five, six innings. And in this stretch of games where we’ve been struggling, that’s been a common theme.”

Baldelli said he’s held two or three postgame talks already during a year that also included an earlier five-game slide, and is hesitant to conduct more because “it starts to get drowned out.” He approved of the players’ decision.

“I don’t know what was said. I have no idea,” Baldelli said. “I think it was the right thing to do at the right time. And hopefully we get something out of it.”

In his sixth season in charge, he’s a little in awe of how quickly things have turned. Again.

“You start to forget some of the things that you’ve experienced when you flip it. I mean we’ve flipped the season completely around multiple times already,” Baldelli said. “I’ve seen a lot of streaky baseball, we all have. This is next-level stuff.”

Pablo López, Monday’s losing starter, expressed disappointment he couldn’t be the stopper but hoped the meeting would make a difference.

“Externalizing gives you the sense of relief,” López said. “When you say things out loud, when you hear things being said out loud, it puts things in perspective. So I think we said things that maybe we were thinking but weren’t saying out loud.”

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During 14 seasons as an NHL defenseman, Ken Klee learned that every playoff series has its own distinct character. The PWHL Minnesota coach didn’t expect things to be any different in the newest pro hockey league.

He saw that play out Sunday, when Minnesota opened the Walter Cup finals with a 4-3 loss at Boston. In the semifinals, goals were hard to come by, as Minnesota and Toronto combined for only 14 in five games. Minnesota and Boston scored half that total in Game 1 of the finals, signaling that this best-of-five set could be more wide-open.

Klee played in 51 NHL playoff games, so he knows how to adapt when the scenario changes. After a back-and-forth opener in the finals, he will adjust the game plan accordingly for Tuesday’s Game 2 at Boston.

“It’s a new series, and we’re going against new people now,” Klee said. “It’s a different look than what we had [in the semifinals].

“Hockey series are always going to take on their own identity, and now, we know what this is going to be like. And it’s good.”

The four goals were uncharacteristic for Boston, the PWHL’s lowest-scoring team in the regular season. Coach Courtney Kessel said increased scoring has been a focal point for her group since league play resumed April 18 after a break for international play. Boston has lost only once in eight games since the break and is 4-0 in the playoffs, but it’s scored two or fewer goals in six of those.

Minnesota also has struggled to score after the break, with a total of 14 goals in the 10 games before Sunday. But its top line is heating up, centered by a resurgent Taylor Heise. In the past two games, Heise has four goals and an assist, and her line provided all of Minnesota’s scoring Sunday.

Heise said being down 1-0 in the series isn’t a concern for a team that roared back from a 2-0 deficit in the semifinals.

“We’re kind of used to it,” she said. “Against Toronto, we never lost hope. We did some really good things [in Game 1], and there are some things we can do better.”

In Game 1, Boston forced some turnovers, and it had stretches where it slowed down the Minnesota attack in the neutral zone. In Game 2, Minnesota will need to match Boston’s physical play, continue relying on its speed and avoid repeating the defensive lapses that hurt the team in the opener.

Kessel wants Boston to get out to a better start after it took more than seven minutes to put a shot on goal in Game 1. She hopes it continues to respond to Minnesota goals the way it did Sunday. Boston twice erased one-goal deficits and scored the game-winner only 15 seconds after Minnesota tied the score.