{"id":556816,"date":"2026-04-20T18:22:41","date_gmt":"2026-04-20T18:22:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/556816\/"},"modified":"2026-04-20T18:22:41","modified_gmt":"2026-04-20T18:22:41","slug":"wild-cruise-past-stars-in-game-1-as-dallas-opening-game-struggles-continue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/556816\/","title":{"rendered":"Wild cruise past Stars in Game 1 as Dallas\u2019 opening-game struggles continue"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mon, April 20, 2026 at 1:42 PM UTC\"\"<\/p>\n

DALLAS, Tex. (WLAX\/WEUX) \u2013 The Minnesota Wild opened the playoffs with a 6-1 win over the Dallas Stars in Game 1 of their Western Conference quarterfinal series Saturday at American Airlines Center.<\/p>\n

It marked Minnesota\u2019s first Game 1 victory since April 17, 2023 \u2014 also against Dallas \u2014 while the Stars continued a troubling trend, dropping their ninth Game 1 in their past 11 playoff series.<\/p>\n

Joel Eriksson Ek gave the Wild an early lead on the power play, starting a run of four unanswered goals. Minnesota pulled away with three goals in the second period to build a 4-0 advantage.<\/p>\n

Jake Oettinger allowed four goals before Dallas got on the board late in the second period on Jason Robertson\u2019s extra-skater goal. Jesper Wallstedt made 27 saves for Minnesota.<\/p>\n

Dallas struggled to generate consistent offense and pressure, something it hopes to correct moving forward.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a long series,\u201d defenseman Miro Heiskanen said. \u201cWe have to be better and move on.\u201d<\/p>\n

Game 2 is set for Monday in Dallas.<\/p>\n

Copyright 2026 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.<\/p>\n

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to FOX2548 & WIProud. <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mon, April 20, 2026 at 1:42 PM UTC DALLAS, Tex. (WLAX\/WEUX) \u2013 The Minnesota Wild opened the playoffs…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":556817,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5118],"tags":[2322,147,5,424,1800,795,499,161,38,5280,423,4,162],"class_list":{"0":"post-556816","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-minnesota-wild","8":"tag-american-airlines-center","9":"tag-dallas-stars","10":"tag-hockey","11":"tag-jake-oettinger","12":"tag-jason-robertson","13":"tag-jesper-wallstedt","14":"tag-joel-eriksson-ek","15":"tag-minnesota","16":"tag-minnesota-wild","17":"tag-minnesotawild","18":"tag-miro-heiskanen","19":"tag-nhl","20":"tag-wild"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116438439816249968","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/556816","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=556816"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/556816\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/556817"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=556816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=556816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=556816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}