DALLAS \u2014 Just wait until the Dallas Stars and Minnesota Wild are playing in the first round of the Western Conference playoffs.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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\u201cThat\u2019s probably exactly what you\u2019re going to expect. Guys finishing hits, taking hits to make plays,\u201d said Jason Robertson, whose 42nd goal with 9:25 to play was the game-winner for the Stars in a 5-4 victory.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor sure,\u201d Stars coach Glen Gulutzan said. \u201cYou knew there was going to be some emotion in the game. They\u2019ve been trying to hunt us down for months, and it\u2019s given them some fuel.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
There were nine roughing penalties in the game \u2014 five against the Wild, four for Dallas \u2014 and plenty of other scuffles involving multiple players.<\/p>\n
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\u201cEvery time these two teams play each other it always is a hard-fought battle,\u201d said Wild coach John Hynes, whose team had its four-game winning streak snapped. \u201cYou saw some emotion in the game, and I think that is to be expected.\u201d<\/p>\n
Until they meet again<\/p>\n
The remaining games for the Stars are all against Eastern Conference teams, the next two against the teams at the bottom of the standings \u2014 their home finale 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.<\/p>\n
The Wild stay in the West, starting at Nashville and ending at home against Anaheim \u2014 two teams fighting for playoff spots. They go in between to St. Louis.<\/p>\n
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Wild\u2019s quick power<\/p>\n
Kirill Kaprizov had two of Minnesota\u2019s three power-play goals, giving him 45 goals overall and matching his single-season franchise record at 19 power-play goals.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
After Dallas got even, Ryan Hartman\u2019s power-play goal with 9 seconds left in the second period put Minnesota up 4-3.<\/p>\n
But even that wasn\u2019t enough for the Wild. They had their first regulation loss since March 2024 when leading going into the third period \u2014 61-0-4 in that span.<\/p>\n
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Minnesota had another power-play chance after Rantanen\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow we played, we should have gotten a better result. I felt like we were playing very good,\u201d Gustavsson said. \u201cWe went 2-2 against them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Their other regular-season matchups<\/p>\n
Dallas won 5-2 when Minnesota on Oct. 14, in the Stars home opener a week into the season.<\/p>\n
Minnesota won both games it hosted, 5-2 on Dec. 11 and a 2-1 overtime win March 21.<\/p>\n
Some hurts<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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Gulutzan didn\u2019t have an update on Heiskanen after the game, but said he didn\u2019t expect him to play in the next game.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ll have him looked at tomorrow and the next day,\u201d said Gulutzan, who was asked if he was worried about the defenseman\u2019s playoff availability. \u201cHonestly, I don\u2019t know, but any time there\u2019s an injury, especially your top guys, it\u2019s concerning.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u2019t return the game.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DALLAS \u2014 Just wait until the Dallas Stars and Minnesota Wild are playing in the first round of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":549691,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[377],"tags":[1801,196,147,535,3490,5,1800,19642,34083,537,270,38,423,2409,35,1496,2029,534,1491,66,162,1531],"class_list":{"0":"post-549690","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-hockey","8":"tag-colin-blackwell","9":"tag-dallas","10":"tag-dallas-stars","11":"tag-filip-gustavsson","12":"tag-glen-gulutzan","13":"tag-hockey","14":"tag-jason-robertson","15":"tag-jerome-miron-imagn","16":"tag-justin-hryckowian","17":"tag-kirill-kaprizov","18":"tag-mikko-rantanen","19":"tag-minnesota-wild","20":"tag-miro-heiskanen","21":"tag-nashville","22":"tag-new-york-rangers","23":"tag-quinn-hughes","24":"tag-ryan-hartman","25":"tag-st-louis","26":"tag-the-wild","27":"tag-toronto","28":"tag-wild","29":"tag-wyatt-johnston"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116381614310488026","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549690","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=549690"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549690\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/549691"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=549690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=549690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=549690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}