The Wild will look\u00a0to take a 2-0 series lead against\u00a0the Stars tonight, something the franchise\u00a0has never done in a playoff series. Minnesota won in convincing fashion in Game 1, 6-1, tying its largest margin of victory in franchise postseason history. It was a total team effort in the Game 1 win, but the Wild also got massive contributions from its star players as well. Matt Boldy (2-1=3), Joel Eriksson Ek (2-1=3), Kirill Kaprizov (1-2=3) and Mats Zuccarello (0-3=3) all had three points in the win. Jesper Wallstedt, in his first career playoff game, stopped 27-of-28 shots faced to become the first\u00a0rookie\u00a0Wild goaltender in team history to earn a win in his playoff debut.<\/p>\n
Both teams had four power play opportunities in Game 1, with the Wild going 2-4 and Dallas going 1-4. Eriksson Ek scored both power play goals for Minnesota while Jason Robertson, who has a goal in four consecutive playoff games, scored for Dallas. The last time these two teams met in the playoffs in 2023, Dallas went 5-11 (45.5%) on the power play in the first two games of the series, compared to Minnesota going 2-9 (22.2%). Minnesota will look to keep the special teams edge moving into tonight\u2019s crucial Game 2.<\/p>\n
For Dallas, the last nine times they have fallen behind 0-1 in a series, they are 6-3 in Game 2. If Dallas wants to continue that trend, they will need a turnaround from goaltender, Jake Oettinger. Including Saturday\u2019s Game 1 loss, Oettinger is 0-4-0 with a 4.45 GAA, a .836 SV% and 18 goals allowed in his last five postseason starts. Teams who go down 0-2 in playoff series are 58-360 (.139) all-time.<\/p>\n
Players to Watch:<\/p>\n
Matt Boldy:\u00a0With three points in Game 1, Boldy is now up to 10 points (7-3=10) in his last seven playoff games. His three-point outing in Game 1 established a new playoff career-high and marked the fourth multi-point playoff game of his career.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Wild will look\u00a0to take a 2-0 series lead against\u00a0the Stars tonight, something the franchise\u00a0has never done in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":556891,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5117],"tags":[196,147,5278,5,4,197],"class_list":{"0":"post-556890","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\/116438946358056604","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/556890","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=556890"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/556890\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/556891"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=556890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=556890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=556890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}