Twelve hours later, in the light of day, Minnesota Wild coach John Hynes was able to offer a slightly new perspective on what had failed in his team\u2019s 4-3 double overtime loss to Dallas, which ended at nearly 1 a.m. on Thursday morning.<\/p>\n
Most notably, special teams.<\/p>\n
![\"Hockey](\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/stp-z-wildstars-24-02.jpg\")
Minnesota wing Matt Boldy and Dallas; Jason Robertson compete for the puck in overtime of Game 3 of a Western Conference quarterfinal series at Grand Casino Arena on April 22, 2026. The Stars won, 4-3, in double overtime. (Photo by David Berding\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n
In a debrief with reporters around 1 p.m. Thursday, Hynes made it clear that it was a complete day off for the team and a chance to rest and reset following a Game 3 that was both physically and emotionally taxing.<\/p>\n
But Hynes and the coaches had been hard at work, trying to figure out the reasons that Dallas had scored the opening goal less than two minutes into the game, the tying goal in the third period and the winning goal in the fifth period \u2014 all on power plays \u2014 while the Wild were 1 for 7 with the man advantage.<\/p>\n
Through three full games and an extra period plus, the Stars are 7 for 17 on the power play, while the Wild are 3 for 15. Minnesota scored twice with the man advantage in their series-opening 6-1 blowout, and has gone 1 for 11 since then.<\/p>\n
The easy explanation for the drought is the loss of top-line forward Mats Zuccarello, who had three assists in the opener and has not played since because of an upper body injury. After looking at video, Hynes acknowledged that Zuccarello\u2019s absence hurts, but that the Wild\u2019s power play issues aren\u2019t that simple.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not taking the things that are available,\u201d Hynes said. \u201cListen, they\u2019re good. They\u2019re a good penalty kill, but there are certain things that they do that you have to try to expose. And you\u2019ve gotta do it. And if it doesn\u2019t work, you\u2019ve got to do it again. And if it doesn\u2019t work, you\u2019ve got to do it again. \u2026 Right now, there\u2019s gotta be more detail to it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The coaching staff spent a good part of Wednesday night and the wee hours of Thursday morning trying to find the right five players for the first power play unit. In a \u201cfully healthy\u201d world, the quintet is Kirill Kaprizov, Matt Boldy, Mats Zuccarello and Joel Eriksson Ek with Quinn Hughes on the blue line. With Zuccarello out, Hynes tried both Bobby Brink and Vladimir Tarasenko with the top unit; neither of them clicked.<\/p>\n
The Wild\u2019s lone man-advantage goal in Games 2 and 3 came from the second unit, with Marcus Johansson getting his first of the playoffs.\u00a0In the immediate aftermath of Game 3, the reaction from players was that they were close to clicking, and that no dramatic changes were needed.<\/p>\n
Notably, the Stars are making Wild goaltender Jesper Wallstedt work harder on the kill than the Wild are challenging Dallas\u2019 Jake Oettinger. Through three games, the Stars have 32 man-advantage shots on goal; the Wild have 19.<\/p>\n
With eight power play chances on Wednesday, half of the Stars\u2019 36 shots on goal were with a man advantage.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou never know when you\u2019re going to get hot on the power play. Might be next game. It could be the game after that,\u201d said Hughes, whose nearly 44 minutes of ice time were a career high and franchise record. \u201cWhether we were 4 for 4 on the power play tonight or 0 for whatever we were, that doesn\u2019t change how we have to approach the next game. You know, we\u2019re going to need it again. Obviously, we had our looks to be the difference and it just didn\u2019t go.\u201d<\/p>\n
While Hughes offered optimism that a breakthrough is near, Boldy pushed back on the idea that there was frustration brewing over the special teams struggles.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re still confident in our group. That was a heck of a hockey game. Back and forth, a lot of chances, goals, saves, everything,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s a long series. We were up 2-1 last year, too (and lost). This whole narrative that we\u2019re frustrated and all this, that\u2019s not true. We\u2019re still confident in our group. Let\u2019s nip that in the bud now because it\u2019s made up.\u201d<\/p>\n
While they took a much-needed day away from the rink, Hynes said both Zuccarello and Yakov Trenin \u2014 also out with a suspected concussion \u2014 tried to go in Game 3 and could not. With an extra day off before Game 4, there was at least some hope for a reunion of the top power play unit by Saturday afternoon.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ll see,\u201d Hynes said. \u201cHope these couple days help and we\u2019ll see where we\u2019re at Saturday.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Twelve hours later, in the light of day, Minnesota Wild coach John Hynes was able to offer a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":558464,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5118],"tags":[5,1119,161,38,5280,4,43,162],"class_list":{"0":"post-558463","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-minnesota-wild","8":"tag-hockey","9":"tag-john-hynes","10":"tag-minnesota","11":"tag-minnesota-wild","12":"tag-minnesotawild","13":"tag-nhl","14":"tag-sports","15":"tag-wild"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116455838445708260","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/558463","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=558463"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/558463\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/558464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=558463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=558463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=558463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}