ST. PAUL, Minn. \u2014 If the Minnesota Wild win what\u2019s now become a best-of-three series against the powerhouse Dallas Stars, depth scoring could be the catalyst.<\/p>\n
Four games into the series, only five players have scored for the Stars, and it\u2019s each member of their No. 1 power play: Jason Robertson has four goals, Wyatt Johnston three, Matt Duchene two, and Mikko Rantanen and Miro Heiskanen one, for a total of 11.<\/p>\n
Other than that \u2026 squat.<\/p>\n
Conversely, eight players have combined to score the Wild\u2019s 14 goals, with two of the biggest in Games 3 and 4 coming from fourth-liners Michael McCarron and Marcus Foligno.<\/p>\n
Matt Boldy, who scored the fifth home playoff overtime goal in franchise history and the first in 12 years on Saturday, said the loudest he\u2019s ever heard the arena was when Foligno scored his game-tying goal with 5:20 left in the third period \u2014 the sixth-latest tying goal in franchise playoff history.<\/p>\n
Of course, that\u2019s probably because Boldy blacked out during his own celebration.<\/p>\n
Nico Sturm called the shift that led to Foligno\u2019s goal a \u201cbig boy shift.\u201d By that point, with the Wild desperately needing a goal from somebody with their season on the line, coach John Hynes had loaded up the top line with Kirill Kaprizov, Joel Eriksson Ek and Boldy. The newly formed second line of Marcus Johansson, Ryan Hartman and Bobby Brink had also provided some excellent shifts before the fourth line came through.<\/p>\n
With Sturm acting as the third forward high on the shift and Quinn Hughes busy breaking ankles all over the zone and reading perfectly off Brock Faber, McCarron won a puck battle with Heiskanen after Jake Oettinger couldn\u2019t swallow a Faber shot 13 seconds before Foligno\u2019s eventual goal. Finally, after Hughes gave the puck to Faber and he left it for Sturm, Sturm fired wide of the net. The puck caromed off the end wall, and Foligno got his stick on the puck as Oettinger was trying to freeze it. The puck hopped over Oettinger into the crease, and Foligno reached over to score.<\/p>\n
\u201cSturmy was awesome tonight,\u201d Foligno said after the game. \u201cI mean, I think he really shot us in the arm a little bit with just the way he played for us, and Big Mac (too). \u2026 We just get it low to high, and we hope to God that Quinny\u2019s got a full tank and he can just kind of go for the whole shift if he wants.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s special when you\u2019re a big guy out there and you\u2019ve got Quinn and Fabes back there. It\u2019s really cool. You just kind of get to playing in front, and they seem to find guys. So it\u2019s a good shot by Sturmy, and I was lucky to get a piece before Oettinger could freeze it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Stars have gone 147:53 since their last even-strength goal and are being outscored 9-3 at five-on-five (11-3 at even strength) in the series.<\/p>\n
But the analytics show that this has mostly been an even series at five-on-five. The Wild are just cashing in on more of their chances, while the Stars haven\u2019t finished as efficiently. In all situations, according to HockeyStats.com, the Wild have scored plus-3.1 goals above expected, and the Stars have scored 2.1 goals below expected.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have to get production in different ways,\u201d Hynes said. \u201cIt was great to see those guys go in and get a huge goal for us. And I thought Sturmy looked good. \u2026 I thought he was pretty good (in Game 3, too).\u201d<\/p>\n
Where the Stars are scoring more than efficiently is on the power play. Dallas scored nine times in six games on the advantage against Minnesota in the 2023 playoffs and had a historically good power play this season \u2014 ranking 11th in NHL history with a 28.6 percent conversion rate. The Stars\u2019 71 power-play goals ranked first in the NHL in 2025-26, and Johnston\u2019s 27 were the second-most in a single season since the 2004-05 lockout.<\/p>\n
So the Wild knew they\u2019d have their hands full. But they never envisioned giving up eight power-play goals in four games (8-for-19, a 42.1 percent conversion rate).<\/p>\n
Plain and simple, the Wild have to figure out their own power play (1-for-15 over the past three games) and start shutting down Dallas\u2019. Minnesota did a good job staying out of the box in Game 4, only taking two minors, but the Stars scored on both of those power plays. The Wild\u2019s kill is at 57.8 percent (15th in the NHL through Saturday), and their power play is at 15.8 percent (dropping to 10th through Saturday, after going 2-for-4 in Game 1).<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of belief in here,\u201d Foligno said. \u201cThese are two unreal teams, and we\u2019ve got to understand that they\u2019re a heck of a hockey club, and it\u2019s gonna take this type of effort every night against that squad. So there\u2019s no pouting in here. Like (Game 3\u2019s double-overtime loss), yeah, it sucks in the moment, but then you realize you\u2019ve got a chance to play another great game and take a lot of positives out of last game, and we got rewarded tonight.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve been in 2-2 series before, and we\u2019ve got to play a really, really good, smart, detailed game in Dallas. I think that\u2019s where we\u2019re going with that. I think we played a great game again. The last two games have been great for us. We just have to minimize power-play chances, in a sense. I think the momentum of the game is something that we have to learn to control in Dallas. So all eyes are just on Game 5. You can\u2019t look at Game 6, 7. It\u2019s got to be just, \u2018How can we win in Dallas for one game?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Boldy is tired of the narrative being about eight consecutive first-round exits. He said that\u2019s outside noise and that nobody in the locker room thinks or talks about it. Of course, he\u2019s only been a part of three postseasons. Veterans like Foligno, Jared Spurgeon and Jonas Brodin often bring it up and know how much fans are dying for this organization to go on a run.<\/p>\n
Faber, part of two, knows, too.<\/p>\n
\u201cSince we\u2019ve been here, we\u2019ve gotten taken out in the first round a few times,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd going through that multiple times, you start to learn the ins and outs of what playoff hockey means and what it takes. The whole team is still learning every day. We learn from each other, and we push each other. That\u2019s it. We have a belief in the group and how far we can go and just trying to take it one step at a time. That\u2019s all we can do.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ST. PAUL, Minn. \u2014 If the Minnesota Wild win what\u2019s now become a best-of-three series against the powerhouse…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":634183,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,7524,575,85],"class_list":["post-634182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-minnesota-wild","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634182","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=634182"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634182\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/634183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=634182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=634182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=634182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}