A Minnesota Wild Blog that WON'T make you sick and kill you!
Yakov Trenin’s return from an upper-body injury gave the Minnesota Wild a much-needed boost in Game 5 against the Dallas Stars, and his presence mattered in ways that went beyond the stat sheet. After missing the previous two games, Trenin returned to the lineup for a crucial swing game in a tied fi...
The Minnesota Wild are not known for being a beefy team. Their most important players include Kirill Kaprizov (5-foot-10), Quinn Hughes (5-foot-10), Jared Spurgeon (5-foot-9), and Mats Zuccarello (5-foot-8). On the other hand, their first-round opponent, the Dallas Stars, boast the second-tallest an...
Mats Zuccarello’s return gave the Minnesota Wild exactly the spark they needed, and the effects were obvious almost immediately. Only 3 minutes and 51 seconds into the game, the Dallas Stars attempted to clear the puck out of their zone. Ryan Hartman intercepted the clearing attempt, passed th...
That's Wild It has never been easy to be a Minnesota sports fan, but something might happen for the first time ever and it's actually a good thing. The Minnesota Wild have the opportunity to close out their first-round series against the Dallas Stars Thursday night, as they currently hold a 3-2...
The Minnesota Wild threatened to fall apart without Mats Zuccarello to start the season, and they threatened to fall apart in the playoffs without him, falling behind two games to one against the Dallas Stars. On paper, it feels absurd that Zuccarello should be the player to derail Minnesota to...
P.K. Subban knows what a top-tier forward looks like. The former Norris Trophy winner spent his career going against some of the biggest names in the sport in the postseason. Alex Ovechkin, Sidney Crosby, Patrice Bergeron, Brad Marchand, Steven Stamkos, Nikita Kucherov, Patrick Kane, Nathan MacKinno...
Think of where the Minnesota Wild stood after Game 3 of their series against the Dallas Stars. The Wild had squandered stealing home-ice advantage in Game 1 by giving up a 3-2 lead entering the third quarter. They failed to capitalize on Michael McCarron scoring his first-ever playoff goal aft...
The Minnesota Wild didn’t just survive Game 5 against the Dallas Stars; they controlled it with their defensive play. From the opening puck drop, Minnesota made Dallas work for every inch of ice, limiting clean entries, crowding the middle of the rink, and forcing the Stars into lower-quality chance...
On Tuesday night, the Minnesota Wild played one of their most professional games of the season. Led by Mats Zuccarello’s return and a suffocating defensive effort, the Wild scored a 4-2 victory over the Dallas Stars and took a 3-2 lead in their first-round Western Conference series. It sets up...
A dark cloud has been hovering over this Minnesota Wild team for a while now. They have suffered nine straight first-round exits. The last time they were able to win a playoff round was back in 2015, and then they promptly got swept by the Chicago Blackhawks as the reward for it. Whether it was batt...
The Minnesota Wild can't pop the champagne yet. Historically, road teams that win Game 5 to go up 3-2 win 77.4% of playoff series, but the door is open for the Dallas Stars to make a comeback if the Wild aren't careful. However, the Wild we saw in Tuesday night's 4-2 win to seize control of th...
The Minnesota Wild are in the middle of a knockdown, drag-out playoff series with the rival Dallas Stars. Many players on the team deserve recognition for their contributions to the 2-2 series deadlock. Matt Boldy is emerging as a superstar, and Brock Faber has made significant strides. Still, perha...
When playoff time rolls around and the regular season moves farther back into the rearview, the things we know about players and teams become true only insofar as they happen now. Whether a player thrives or fails in a playoff season becomes a key part of the narrative that shapes their value and st...
The date is April 24, 2015. The Minnesota Wild went into Scottrade Center, recovered from an early goal-against from then-superstar Vladimir Tarasenko, and methodically hung four goals on the St. Louis Blues. Marco Scandella, Nino Niederreiter, Mikko Koivu, and Charlie Coyle were your scorers that d...
Entering the postseason, the Minnesota Wild's hopes for success more or less boiled down to: They have Quinn Hughes this time. It was a great reason for hope. Wild fans watched the superstar defenseman elevate their favorite team for 48 games this season, supercharging the power play and picki...
In such a close opening playoff series, this may not be the time to be talking about the Minnesota Wild and what things will look like if they do, in fact, claim their first Stanley Cup. However, a topic that always comes up as the playoffs begin to play down is, Who actually gets their name on Lord...
Mats Zuccarello’s injury has quietly become one of the biggest reasons the Minnesota Wild’s first-round series has swung in the Dallas Stars’ favor. The Wild looked sharp in Game 1, but once Zuccarello exited the lineup, their power play lost its most important connector, and the offense became far...
That's Wild Leave it to heartbeat of the Minnesota Wild Marcus Foligno to come up big when it mattered. Down by one goal in the third period, the grinding winger scored the equalizing goal which then forced the overtime in which Matt Boldy scored his game-winner, for the Wild to take Game 4...
The Minnesota Wild needed every second of overtime to finish off the Dallas Stars, and Matt Boldy delivered the payoff with a late-tip-in that gave the Wild a 3-2 win in Game 4. It was the kind of playoff game that felt close from the opening faceoff to the final shot. Both teams traded chances, mom...
If the Minnesota Wild can turn themselves from perennial also-rans to a legitimate Stanley Cup contender, December 12, 2025, will be seen as the turning point. Of course it will. That's when the Wild made the Quinn Hughes trade, bringing the transformative defenseman into the fold. But t...
While Minnesota Wild fans waited with bated breath for Game 4 of the playoffs, they apparently decided that there wasn’t enough to complain about. Well, good thing The Athletic published a bullet point in one of their articles that spurred on an entire morning’s worth of idiotic discourse....
The Minnesota Wild’s Game 3 performance has fans reeling. After the Wild’s man-advantage unit took over Game 1, they crashed back to earth. Quinn Hughes and Kirill Kaprizov played about 12 minutes each at five-on-four, and the only power play goal came from Marcus Johansson. That’s nothing sho...
The Minnesota Wild enter Saturday in a 2-1 hole, and a big reason is that the Dallas Stars have been able to bottle up Kirill Kaprizov in Games 2 and 3. In over an hour of ice time between his previous two contests, Kaprizov has a lone assist and four shots on goal. He's laid both those eggs without...
The revolution is over. Almost every team in the NHL has embraced the practice of putting four forwards on the power play. Statistically, it's the best bet. Forwards almost always have more shooting talent than defensemen, and getting pucks down low is a much better play than having a defenseman roc...
The Minnesota Wild came away from Game 3 with a heartbreaking loss, but the final score only tells part of the story. The game had the kind of intensity you expect in the playoffs, yet it also had a growing sense that the officials were letting too much go in one direction. Dallas managed to survive...