Stars and Wild provide quite a preview for their upcoming playoff series
DALLAS (AP) — Just wait until the Dallas Stars and Minnesota Wild are playing in the first round of the Western Conference playoffs.
They set quite a tone in a preview that came with a week left in the regular season. The Central Division foes, already locked into a first-round matchup, were ready to get after each other even before the best-of-seven series they will play at the start of the postseason.
“That’s probably exactly what you’re going to expect. Guys finishing hits, taking hits to make plays,” said Jason Robertson, whose 42nd goal with 9:25 to play was the game-winner for the Stars in a 5-4 victory on Thursday night.
“For sure,” Stars coach Glen Gulutzan said. “You knew there was going to be some emotion in the game. They’ve been trying to hunt us down for months, and it’s given them some fuel.”
Wyatt Johnston, Mikko Rantanen and Colin Blackwell each had a goal and an assist for the Stars, who overcame a two-goal deficit and now at 106 points are four ahead of Minnesota for home-ice advantage. Both teams have three more regular-season games before their playoff opener.
There were nine roughing penalties in the game — five against the Wild, four for Dallas — and plenty of other scuffles involving multiple players.
“Every time these two teams play each other it always is a hard-fought battle,” said Wild coach John Hynes, whose team had its four-game winning streak snapped. “You saw some emotion in the game, and I think that is to be expected.”
Until they meet again
The remaining games for the Stars are all against Eastern Conference teams, the next two against the teams at the bottom of the standings — their home finale Saturday against the New York Rangers before going to Toronto. Dallas finishes at playoff-bound Buffalo. which has ended an NHL-record 14 seasons of futility.
The Wild stay in the West, starting at Nashville and ending at home against Anaheim — two teams fighting for playoff spots. They go in between to St. Louis.
Wild’s quick power
Kirill Kaprizov had two of Minnesota’s three power-play goals, giving him 45 goals overall and matching his single-season franchise record at 19 power-play goals.
Kaprizov put the Wild up 2-1 with 16 seconds left in the first, and 14 seconds into the penalty. He extended that to 3-1 on another quick power-play goal in the second, only 16 seconds into the man advantage.
After Dallas got even, Ryan Hartman’s power-play goal with 9 seconds left in the second period put Minnesota up 4-3.
But even that wasn’t enough for the Wild. They had their first regulation loss since March 2024 when leading going into the third period — 61-0-4 in that span.
Minnesota had another power-play chance after Rantanen’s slashing penalty with 2 1/2 minutes left, but failed to score even with an extra skater after pulling Filip Gustavsson out of the net.
“How we played, we should have gotten a better result. I felt like we were playing very good,” Gustavsson said. “We went 2-2 against them.”
Their other regular-season matchups
Dallas won 5-2 when Minnesota on Oct. 14, in the Stars home opener a week into the season.
Minnesota won both games it hosted, 5-2 on Dec. 11 and a 2-1 overtime win March 21.
Some hurts
Stars defenseman Miro Heiskanen never returned because of a lower-body injury after being knocked hard into the boards by Hartman late in the first period.
Gulutzan didn’t have an update on Heiskanen after the game, but said he didn’t expect him to play in the next game.
“We’ll have him looked at tomorrow and the next day,” said Gulutzan, who was asked if he was worried about the defenseman’s playoff availability. “Honestly, I don’t know, but any time there’s an injury, especially your top guys, it’s concerning.”
Before he got hurt, Heiskanen had hit the puck that deflected off the stick of Joel Ericksson Ek into the face of the Minnesota center who left the ice and also didn’t return the game.
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