Monday night’s 4-2 loss against the Dallas Stars showed that the Minnesota Wild aren’t just squaring off against one of the NHL’s top teams. They’re also facing off against their own history.

We undoubtedly saw what the new-look Wild were capable of in Game 1. They ran the Stars off their own ice in a humiliating 6-1 defeat. Even in the Game 2 loss, we saw the potential for Minnesota to take this game. Look at what had to happen for Dallas to win on their own ice. Jake Oettinger had to make point-blank stop after point-blank stop. Wyatt Johnston‘s opening goal came on a weird bounce. 

 

Minnesota might well have had its first 2-0 lead in franchise history if it weren’t for the Old Wild fighting them at every turn. 

The problem that haunted the Old Wild arose again on Monday: Their secondary scoring. Brock Faber stepped up with a monster game, rifling the only two goals that got past Oettinger and playing superb defense in nearly 27 minutes. But when the rest of Minnesota’s stars — Kirill Kaprizov, Matt Boldy, Joel Eriksson Ek, Quinn Hughes — couldn’t put the puck in the net, no one else could.

Minnesota is 7-4 in playoff games when Kaprizov scores a goal, averaging 3.82 goals per game in those contests. When Kaprizov doesn’t find paydirt? They’re 3-13 and average 1.75 goals per game. The Wild’s depth never picked up the slack before, and they weren’t able to do it on Monday night.

Sure, there were chances. Bobby Brink made a beautiful centering feed to Danila Yurov, only to be thwarted by Oettinger. The grinder line of Michael McCarron and Folignos Marcus and Nick created enough chaos by the net to score a tying goal, but Nick Foligno couldn’t corral a puck in front of an open net, and McCarron hit iron.

The Wild tried leaning on their top players to go Sicko Mode for a series. Last year, Kaprizov and Boldy combined for 10 goals. It wasn’t enough to topple the Golden Knights, and it won’t be enough to topple the Stars. The New Wild demands someone down the lineup to step up and be a hero, but the specter of the Old Wild kept them quiet.

Speaking of the Old Wild, their newfound discipline under John Hynes unraveled in Game 2. The Wild have the Folignos because they’re supposed to thrive in playoff hockey; they arguably are the reason Minnesota dropped Game 2. Dallas took the lead for good on the power play after Nick laid a careless elbow to Nils Lundkvist. Marcus Foligno reacted to an interference from Thomas Harley by headlocking Harley and slamming his head into the glass in the final seconds of the middle period. 

The Wild killed off the penalty, but the boneheaded move robbed the Wild’s comeback bid of two precious minutes. To top things off, the team’s last-minute hopes were dashed by a too-many-men penalty. 

We already mentioned the stat that defines the Old Wild: They’ve never taken a 2-0 series lead in their history. Never. A team that’s up 2-0 in a series goes on to win 86.1% of the time. Home teams that tie the series in Game 2 only go on to lose their series 43.8% of the time. Minnesota basically cut its odds of winning the series in half by losing.

So much of the New Wild is defined by how easy Quinn Hughes makes things. Moving the puck is easy, finding space in the offensive zone is easy, and scoring on the power play is easy. The Old Wild — no matter what star players are or aren’t suiting up — are defined by never, ever, ever making things easier on themselves. The Old Wild won on Monday, and the New Wild will need to find a way to vanquish the ghosts of their past to advance past the first round. 

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