ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) \u2014 The Minnesota Wild have clinched a spot in the NHL playoffs, giving them another chance to advance in the postseason for the first time since 2015.<\/p>\n
The Wild earned a bid 75 games in after clinching last year in the 82nd and final game of the regular season. They beat league-worst Vancouver 5-2 on Thursday night to get in.<\/p>\n
Minnesota was eliminated by the Vegas Golden Knights in the first round last year, ending coach John Hynes\u2019 debut season.<\/p>\n
The Wild failed to advance in seven postseason appearances between 2016 and 2023. Their deepest run in the playoffs was a trip to the conference finals in 2003 in the franchise\u2019s third year of existence.<\/p>\n
The Minnesota North Stars lost in the 1981 and 1991 Stanley Cup Final. They relocated to Dallas in 1993, becoming the Stars, and hoisted the Cup in 1999.<\/p>\n
The Wild proved their commitment to contending this season by signing Kirill Kaprizov to an eight-year, $136 million contract extension \u2014 the richest deal in league history. The star winger has a team-high 83 points.<\/p>\n
Goaltender Filip Gustavsson has won twice as many games as he\u2019s lost while giving up a little more than 2 1\/2 goals per game.<\/p>\n
Minnesota has the league\u2019s longest active streak of consecutive winning seasons at 14.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) \u2014 The Minnesota Wild have clinched a spot in the NHL playoffs, giving them…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":537801,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5128],"tags":[894,5,1119,537,4,61702,3494,3492,61703,61704,893,27,5313],"class_list":{"0":"post-537853","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-vancouver-canucks","8":"tag-canucks","9":"tag-hockey","10":"tag-john-hynes","11":"tag-kirill-kaprizov","12":"tag-nhl","13":"tag-nhl-playoffs-minnesota-wild","14":"tag-package-100502-member-choice-sports-option","15":"tag-product-30599-ap-sports-news-s-wire-only","16":"tag-product-40793-ap-minnesota-sports-only","17":"tag-product-40822-ap-wisconsin-sports-only","18":"tag-vancouver","19":"tag-vancouver-canucks","20":"tag-vancouvercanucks"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116338852800573527","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537853","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=537853"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537853\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/537801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=537853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=537853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=537853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}