{"id":551222,"date":"2026-04-12T16:00:19","date_gmt":"2026-04-12T16:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/551222\/"},"modified":"2026-04-12T16:00:19","modified_gmt":"2026-04-12T16:00:19","slug":"stamkos-leads-predators-past-wild-2-1-locking-minnesota-into-the-wests-third-seed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/551222\/","title":{"rendered":"Stamkos leads Predators past Wild 2-1, locking Minnesota into the West&#8217;s third seed"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Steven Stamkos scored a goal and added an assist to lead the Nashville Predators to a 2-1 victory over Minnesota on Saturday, locking the Wild into the third seed in the Western Conference for the playoffs.<\/p>\n<p>Matthew Wood also scored and Justus Annunen made 21 saves for the Predators, 4-1-1 in their last six.<\/p>\n<p>Minnesota will face the Dallas Stars in the first round of the playoffs.<\/p>\n<p>Michael McCarron scored and Jesper Wallstedt made 20 saves for the Wild, losers of two straight.<\/p>\n<p>The Predators are now three points behind the Los Angeles Kings for the Western Conference&#8217;s second wild card. The Kings defeated the Edmonton Oilers earlier Saturday. Nashville has two games remaining and the Kings three.<\/p>\n<p>Stamkos scored the game&#8217;s first goal with 4:59 remaining in the opening period on a wraparound tucked just inside the left post.<\/p>\n<p>The goal was the 40th of the season for Stamkos, the eighth time in his career that he&#8217;s scored 40 or more.<\/p>\n<p>Wood made it 2-0 at 6:34 of the second after Stamkos corralled the rebound of Nick Perbix&#8217;s shot and found Wood in the slot, where he beat Wallstedt with a wrist shot.<\/p>\n<p>McCarron, traded by Nashville to Minnesota prior to this season&#8217;s trade deadline, scored at 6:54 of the third to avoid the Wild&#8217;s first shutout of the season. It was his second post-trade goal. <\/p>\n<p>The Wild did not dress forwards Joel Eriksson Ek and Mats Zuccarello or defenseman Jared Spurgeon for the game.<\/p>\n<p>Nashville captain Roman Josi returned to the lineup after missing Thursday night&#8217;s game against the Utah Mammoth with an upper-body injury.<\/p>\n<p>Up next<\/p>\n<p>Wild at St. Louis on Monday night.<\/p>\n<p>Predators host San Jose on Monday night.<\/p>\n<p class=\"content__tags__label\">In:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Steven Stamkos scored a goal and added an assist to lead the Nashville Predators to a 2-1 victory&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":551223,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[377],"tags":[5,161,38,231,4,43],"class_list":{"0":"post-551222","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-hockey","8":"tag-hockey","9":"tag-minnesota","10":"tag-minnesota-wild","11":"tag-nashville-predators","12":"tag-nhl","13":"tag-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116392573226815178","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551222","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=551222"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551222\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/551223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=551222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=551222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=551222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}