{"id":556147,"date":"2026-04-19T17:07:25","date_gmt":"2026-04-19T17:07:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/556147\/"},"modified":"2026-04-19T17:07:25","modified_gmt":"2026-04-19T17:07:25","slug":"game-recap-wild-6-stars-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/556147\/","title":{"rendered":"Game Recap: Wild 6, Stars 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

Joel Eriksson Ek<\/a> scored twice on the power play, Kirill Kaprizov<\/a> had a goal and two assists, and Ryan Hartman<\/a>\u00a0had a goal and an assist for the Wild, who are the No. 3 seed in the Central Division. Wallstedt made 27 saves in his Stanley Cup Playoff debut, and Zuccarello had three assists.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was definitely nervous,\u201d said Wallstedt, a rookie. \u201cI think it shows that it means something to you. I like a little bit of nerves. I think it\u2019s something good. There were definitely some nerves throughout the day and then a little bit extra rolling into the game. But after the national anthem was over and the first couple pucks started coming, you\u2019re good.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI wanted to play and I felt like I have been going good. I was a little surprised (to get the start). But I was very excited as soon as I got the news. I just wanted to make sure I was ready today.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jason Robertson<\/a> scored, and Jake Oettinger<\/a>\u00a0made 23 saves for the Stars, who are the No. 2 seed in the Central.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe didn\u2019t deserve to win,\u201d Dallas forward Mikko Rantanen<\/a>\u00a0said. \u201cI think two power-play goals for them, two a little-bit bounces for them where we had guys in the right spot. Just even keel. Playoffs are like this. Sometimes you lose a game, you can feel like you\u2019re done. But that\u2019s the mentality you need to have, you\u2019ve got to reset and learn from mistakes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cFirst 30 minutes, we didn\u2019t win enough battles. They were just that little bit stronger in the battles and that\u2019s why they were able to make us defend more than we want to. Just got to be stronger.\u201d<\/p>\n

Game 2 is here on Monday (9:30 p.m. ET; FDSNWI, FDSNNO, Victory+, ESPN, TVAS2, SN360).<\/p>\n

\u201cWe prepped for a couple days coming into this one. Now, we will gather information from this game and continue to move forward,\u201d Minnesota coach John Hynes said. \u201cFor me, it\u2019s game to game and day to day. We want to continue to get better. We won and they [Dallas] lost. It\u2019s not so much being satisfied where you\u2019re at or that\u2019s what it is. We need to continue to find ways to get better.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eriksson Ek gave the Wild a 1-0 lead at 5:35 of the first period on the power play. He scored on a one-timer from the left hash marks to finish a tic-tac-toe passing play with Zuccarello and Boldy, who found an open Eriksson Ek with a pass from the goal line.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think every team in the playoffs talks about not getting too high or too low. Just enjoy every day and each game and then we will go from there,\u201d Eriksson Ek said. \u201cI think we played pretty good today. The next game is a new game, so we just have to do it over and over every game. We know they are probably not the happiest with that game, so I am sure it\u2019s going to be hard next game.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Joel Eriksson Ek scored twice on the power play, Kirill Kaprizov had a goal and two assists, and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":556148,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5117],"tags":[196,147,5278,5,4,197],"class_list":{"0":"post-556147","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-dallas-stars","8":"tag-dallas","9":"tag-dallas-stars","10":"tag-dallasstars","11":"tag-hockey","12":"tag-nhl","13":"tag-stars"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116432472890732390","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/556147","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=556147"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/556147\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/556148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=556147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=556147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=556147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}