DALLAS \u2013 Coming off the biggest series-opening win in the 25-year history of the Minnesota Wild, their coach wants even more than the 6-1 drubbing the visitors laid on the Dallas Stars in Game 1.<\/p>\n
Meeting with the media on Sunday, which was a day off for the team, John Hynes was quick to point out they his team has won one game, not a series and not a trophy, and they will need to get even better from here.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe prepped for a few days to play Game 1 and we played Game 1 and we got the result we wanted, but we want to continue to get better as the series goes on,\u201d Hynes said. \u201cAs we all know, I think it\u2019s important that you stay focused, you don\u2019t get too high after a win, you don\u2019t get too low after a loss. It\u2019s a series.\u201d<\/p>\n
American Airlines Center, the site of this series\u2019 first two games, is where Brock Faber made his playoff debut three years ago in a win. On Saturday in the 2026 opener he played a superlative game according to the advanced statistics, but those numbers and algorithms were unnecessary for anyone who watched Faber with the naked eye, and saw a defenseman who \u2013 partnered with headliner Quinn Hughes \u2013 is emerging into his own kind of stardom.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been playing with Brock for 45 games, maybe a little bit more now, and like I\u2019ve been saying, the more we play together the more we\u2019re going to grow together,\u201d said Hughes, who jumped back into the Game 1 lineup after not skating for a week. \u201cAnd he can pick my brain and he knows where I want the puck and I know where he wants the puck, and just kind of be able to read off each other without having to say anything.\u201d<\/p>\n
For Faber, there\u2019s an acknowledgement that they will face a talented and desperate Stars team on Monday night in Game 2, but also an embrace of the coach\u2019s challenge to be even better as the Wild seek to take a 2-0 series lead for the first time in franchise history.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe played a good game. There\u2019s things we can improve on, right?\u201d Faber said. \u201cA couple bounces don\u2019t go our way, who knows. I thought we deserved to win that game, but at the end of the day, you\u2019ve got to put it in the past.\u201d<\/p>\n
Faber has been with the Wild for three full seasons. Hynes, slightly less than that. Unlike an army of Wild fans that sometimes expects the worst, the coach doesn\u2019t have the long-ago memories of two previous playoff series losses to Dallas. He enters Game 2 looking forward, and wanting more.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s this year. It\u2019s our team. It\u2019s a new year. We\u2019re a different team,\u201d Hynes said, heaping praise on the Stars for their talent, which the Wild don\u2019t look past. \u201cWe\u2019re not satisfied with winning one game. The objective is to win a series, and last night\u2019s done. It\u2019s over. We\u2019re taking lessons out of it, and we\u2019re gonna be a better team tomorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DALLAS \u2013 Coming off the biggest series-opening win in the 25-year history of the Minnesota Wild, their coach…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":556257,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[463,464],"tags":[5,38,4,60,43,14,104,718,162],"class_list":{"0":"post-556256","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl-playoffs","8":"category-stanley-cup-playoffs","9":"tag-hockey","10":"tag-minnesota-wild","11":"tag-nhl","12":"tag-nhl-playoffs","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-stanley-cup","15":"tag-stanley-cup-playoffs","16":"tag-stanley-cup-playoffs-nhl","17":"tag-wild"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116433189445844692","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/556256","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=556256"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/556256\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/556257"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=556256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=556256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=556256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}