{"id":547348,"date":"2026-04-08T12:36:14","date_gmt":"2026-04-08T12:36:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/547348\/"},"modified":"2026-04-08T12:36:14","modified_gmt":"2026-04-08T12:36:14","slug":"dallas-stars-playoff-picture-who-will-they-play-in-the-1st-round","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/547348\/","title":{"rendered":"Dallas Stars playoff picture: Who will they play in the 1st round?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Dallas Stars are set to reignite their playoff rivalry with the Minnesota Wild as they face off in the Stanley Cup’s first round, promising intense games.<\/p>\n

DALLAS \u2014 The first round matchup in the Stanley Cup Playoffs is set for the Dallas Stars<\/a>.<\/p>\n

After the Colorado Avalanche clinched the Central Division on Tuesday night, it locked in the No. 2 seed Stars for a playoff bout with rival Minnesota Wild. Colorado’s 3-1 win over the St Louis Blues gave the Avs an eight-point advantage over the Stars in the Central Division with only four games remaining for Dallas.<\/p>\n

Similarly, Utah Mammoth is 16 points behind the third place Minnesota Wild, which locks both Dallas and Minnesota in the No. 2 and No. 3 spots, respectively. Dallas and Minnesota can jockey for seeding and home ice advantage amongst themselves over the next week, but they’ll play each other in the first round regardless.<\/p>\n

This will be the third time the two teams have played each other in the playoffs; the Stars won in six games (4-2) in both the 2016 first round and the 2023 first round.<\/p>\n

There is no love lost between these two fan bases, given that the Stars left Minnesota to come to North Texas in the 90s, and the controversial Matt Dumba hit on fan favorite Joe Pavelski in 2023<\/a>.<\/p>\n


\nDallas Stars vs. Minnesota Wild season series <\/p>\n

Oct.14: Wild 2, Stars 5\u00a0Dec. 11: Stars 2, Wild 5March 21: Stars 1, Wild 2 (OT)April 9: TBD <\/p>\n

The Stars are looking to make another deep playoff run after making the Western Conference finals for three seasons in a row.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Dallas Stars are set to reignite their playoff rivalry with the Minnesota Wild as they face off…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":547349,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5118],"tags":[5,161,38,5280,4,162],"class_list":{"0":"post-547348","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-minnesota-wild","8":"tag-hockey","9":"tag-minnesota","10":"tag-minnesota-wild","11":"tag-minnesotawild","12":"tag-nhl","13":"tag-wild"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116369121978576813","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547348","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=547348"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547348\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/547349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=547348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=547348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=547348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}