The Dallas Stars will play the Minnesota Wild in the Western Conference First Round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs.<\/p>\n
The Stars (46-20-12) are second in the Central Division, two points ahead of the Wild (45-21-12). The team that finishes with more points will have home-ice advantage.<\/p>\n
Jason Robertson<\/a> leads the Stars with 91 points (41 goals, 50 assists) in 78 games. Wyatt Johnston<\/a> is next with 82 points (43 goals, 39 assists) in 78 games and leads the NHL with 26 power-play goals. Mikko Rantanen<\/a>\u00a0has 74 points (21 goals, 53 assists) in 60 games.<\/p>\n Rantanen missed 15 games with a lower-body injury he sustained while playing for Team Finland at the 2026 Winter Olympics before returning on March 28, when he had a goal and an assist in a 6-3 win at the Pittsburgh Penguins.<\/p>\n Dallas goalie Jake Oettinger<\/a>, who won gold with Team USA at the Olympics, is 32-12-6 with a 2.61 goals-against average, .899 save percentage and three shutouts in 51 games. Backup Casey DeSmith<\/a>\u00a0is 14-8-6 with a 2.34 GAA, .910 save percentage and one shutout in 29 games (27 starts).<\/p>\n The Wild are led offensively by forwards Kirill Kaprizov<\/a> (87 points; 43 goals, 44 assists in 76 games) and Matt Boldy<\/a>, who has an NHL career-high 83 points (42 goals, 41 assists) in 74 games. Forward Vladimir Tarasenko<\/a> has scored 23 goals, and forward Ryan Hartman<\/a> has scored 22 goals.<\/p>\n Goalie Filip Gustavsson<\/a> is 28-13-6 with a 2.59 GAA, .909 save percentage and four shutouts in 48 games (47 starts). Rookie Jesper Wallstedt<\/a>\u00a0is 17-8-6 with a 2.65 GAA, .915 save percentage and four shutouts in 33 games (31 starts).<\/p>\n The Wild are 2-1-0 against the Stars (1-1-1) heading the final game of the season series at American Airlines Center in Dallas on Thursday (9 p.m. ET; HULU, ESPN+).<\/p>\n Boldy (two goals, two assists) and Tarasenko (one goal, three assists) each has four points against the Stars, and Kaprizov has three (one goal, two assists). Gustavsson has started all three games, going 2-1-0 with a 1.99 GAA and .915 save percentage.<\/p>\n Miro Heiskanen<\/a> leads the Stars against the Wild with four points (one goal, three assists) and Robertson has two goals and one assist. Johnston, forward Roope Hintz<\/a>\u00a0and defenseman Esa Lindell<\/a>\u00a0each has one goal and two assists.<\/p>\n Oettinger is 1-1-1 with a 2.31 GAA and .929 save percentage against Minnesota this season.<\/p>\n This will be the third playoff series between the teams. The Stars won in six games in both the 2016 first round and the 2023 first round.<\/p>\n \u201cWe learned some lessons last time we played them,\u201d Wild forward Marcus Foligno said. \u201cWe know that they\u2019re a really good team, and so are we. But they have some lethal weapons, and we\u2019re just more educated, more experienced going into this series than we were before.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Dallas Stars will play the Minnesota Wild in the Western Conference First Round of the Stanley Cup…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":592889,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":["post-592888","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592888","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=592888"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592888\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/592889"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=592888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=592888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=592888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}