DALLAS — It’s a remarkable thing how 18,000 people can go from foaming at the mouth to deathly silent in the time it takes a puck to travel 23 feet, but that’s what happened at American Airlines Center on Saturday night when Joel Eriksson Ek one-timed a one-touch pass from Matt Boldy and blasted it past Jake Oettinger in the first period of the first game of the first-round series between the Minnesota Wild and the Dallas Stars.

In the postseason, to a fan, every goal against feels apocalyptic; hope, confidence and optimism instantly dissolve like smoke in the breeze. It’s part of the fun, right? Those wild swings of emotion, those Himalayan highs and those Mariana lows. Every goal-for just won the Stanley Cup. Every goal-against just lost it.

Ah, but the Stars know better, right? This is a group that has largely stayed intact through nine playoff series in the last three springs, making three straight trips to the Western Conference final. It’s a team that’s famous for its slow starts — they lost eight straight Game 1s before finally beating Winnipeg in the second-round opener last May — and even more famous for winning anyway. Tried and tested. Wizened but wise.

Hell, these Stars are leaning into their history. Hard. They’re proud of their past — frustrated by it, sure, but grateful for the lessons it taught them, too. The pregame hype video at AAC focused on those three Western Conference final losses, a shoegaze cover of Linkin Park’s “In The End” droning over sepia-toned images of Dallas players burying their heads in their hands on the bench, trudging off the ice unsatisfied, uncrowned. You know, unfinished business and all that. The Stars know what it feels like to lose a series, and they know it doesn’t feel like this.

And so after getting run out of their own building Saturday night in a 6-1 loss, the Stars did what they always do after a Game 1 loss to the Wild: They shrugged it off. They stayed calm. Chill. Unhappy, sure, but unconcerned. Remember, they lost 5-1 to Colorado in Game 1 of the first round last year, and that eventually worked out fine.

“We lost last year, and we’ve lost a lot of Game 1s here, I’ve heard,” Mikko Rantanen said. “So I’m not too worried.”

Well, maybe they should be. At least that would show a pulse.

Look, it’s good to be composed in defeat, to not spiral and panic. That’s a mark of mental toughness, and it goes a long way in the playoffs. Nobody’s saying the Stars should be freaking out and panicking. But they should be furious with themselves. Because it’s one thing to lose Game 1. It’s another to lose it in this fashion. The Stars treated the first game of the Stanley Cup playoffs like it was the 53rd game of the regular season. They had no juice, no hop in their step. Their forecheck was non-existent, giving Minnesota easy clear after easy clear, every possession a none-and-done. Their penalty kill was passive; their defensemen lost seemingly every 50/50 puck.

Say what you will about the silliness of the staged captains fight that kicked off Game 1 of the Senators-Hurricanes series earlier in the day, but at least both of those teams came out swinging.

The Stars came out sleeping. And if Game 1 served as a wakeup call, you couldn’t tell afterward.

Jake Oettinger doesn’t have to flip over tables in the locker room after being hung out to dry, but maybe something a little more fiery than, “I don’t think we played our best game, but we played a lot of playoff series and lost a lot of Game 1s.”

Miro Heiskanen doesn’t have to shatter sticks against the walls of the tunnel, but maybe something a little more spicy than, “It’s a long series, it’s a best-of-seven, it’s one game.”

Glen Gulutzan doesn’t have to throw his goalie under the bus, but maybe something a little more frustrated than, “I think we all have a little bit more.”

Because this isn’t a typical first-round series. Thanks to Gary Bettman’s stubborn refusal to acquiesce to literally the entire hockey world and abandon the divisional playoff format, we’re getting a conference-final-caliber matchup in the first round. No, the Wild don’t have the experience or the track record of the Stars, but they’ve got a similar depth of talent. And while Rantanen was taking two offensive-zone stick penalties and Wyatt Johnston was a non-factor at five-on-five (he did assist on Jason Robertson’s power-play goal) and Heiskanen was easing his way back in from injury, the Wild’s stars came to play. Matt Boldy had two goals and an assist, Kirill Kaprizov scored on a spectacular short-side snipe, Quinn Hughes and Brock Faber controlled play from the back end and Mats Zuccarello doled out three assists. The meek Stars didn’t even bother testing rookie Minnesota goalie Jesper Wallstedt until the game was already in hand.

The Wild are playing for an organization and a fan base that has endured eight straight first-round losses and five straight playoff series in which they’ve led but lost. The State of Hockey wants this. Needs this. And you could feel it in the way their team played. They had urgency; the Stars had none. And don’t forget, it took Rantanen going thermonuclear to a level rarely seen in the history of the NHL — 11 points in Games 5-7 — for Dallas to pull out that series against Colorado last year. Relying on that kind of individual performance is a dicey proposition, to say the least.

Dallas knows this. Yet Dallas keeps doing this. Series after series, year after year.

“I don’t think we’re doing it on purpose,” Rantanen said. “I don’t think they’ve done it on purpose for years. It’s just how it went. It’s not ideal.”

No, it’s not. After a few questions, Oettinger relented and said of such an anemic start, “It’s not acceptable,” but he said it almost defensively. The Stars remain unruffled. Maybe that’s OK. History suggests it is. But if you’re a Stars fan, or a Stars coach, or a Stars front-office member, it has to be utterly infuriating.

If you can’t get up for opening night of the Stanley Cup playoffs, what can you get up for?

“It certainly didn’t look like a playoff game from our point of view,” Gulutzan said.

Gulutzan was an assistant coach for Edmonton, watching from the other side as Dallas came up short in the last two Western Conference finals, but he knows well what his new team has been through. And he doesn’t feel urgency, doesn’t sense too much frustration with three true chances at a championship squandered. Instead, he senses resolve and a healthy big-picture perspective. He senses a mature, winning attitude.

“It’s another bingo ball in there,” Gulutzan said. “You’ve just got to get to the playoffs, you’ve got to get there and try again and learn from your mistakes, then you’ve got to get there again and try again and learn again. It’s not just going to happen the first time somebody makes the playoffs; it’s very rare. So I don’t feel that urgency with them, which is a good thing. But I feel more of that commitment from them, that they’re going to try to push this even further. You’ve got to keep getting yourself in the dance.”

As Robertson put it, each year is a “reset.” Losing last year doesn’t mean you’ll win this year, just as winning last year doesn’t mean you’ll win this year. But the reps count. All those wins are lessons, just as all those losses are lessons. And Dallas has learned so much.

Maybe too much. No, it’s not time to panic. But it is time to wake up. The Wild are every bit the challenge that Colorado was last year. And if Dallas doesn’t get its act together — if Oettinger doesn’t dial in, if the penalty kill doesn’t figure something out, if the defense doesn’t keep their controllers plugged in at all times, if the Stars don’t start playing like they’re in the freaking Stanley Cup playoffs — there won’t be a fourth deep run in their future.

There won’t even be another Game 1 for them to lose.