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Hunter Haight #37 of the Minnesota Wild celebrates scoring his first career NHL goal in the second period against the Anaheim Ducks at Grand Casino Arena on April 14, 2026 in St Paul, Minnesota. (Photo by David Berding\/Getty Images)<\/p>\nThe Minnesota Wild will be rested and generally healthy when they open the playoffs, most likely on Saturday, in Dallas. They will bring perhaps their most talented team in franchise history to North Texas with, perhaps, just one looming question mark about their postseason lineup.<\/p>\n
And that question, regarding who will start in goal versus the Stars in Game 1, may have gotten bigger and more complicated in the Wild\u2019s regular-season finale.<\/p>\n
Rookie goalie Jesper Wallstedt put on a show, stopping all but two of Anaheim\u2019s 36 shots as the Wild rallied for a 3-2 win on Fan Appreciation Night at Grand Casino Arena.<\/p>\n
Trailing 1-0 early, the Wild got goals from Danila Yurov, Robby Fabbri and Hunter Haight \u2014 his first in the NHL \u2014 to finish the regular season with a 46-24-12 record, good for 104 points in the standings.<\/p>\n
But the story of the night was Wallstedt, who played the first period wearing a jersey with \u201cWALLSTEAD\u201d on the back, although the spelling error did little to dampen his handiwork.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously going into it, I knew it was going to be a challenge. Going back-to-back, we\u2019re resting guys, they\u2019re obviously pushing to not play Colorado in the first round, and they\u2019re trying to get spots in their division,\u201d said Wallstedt, who finishes his rookie season with a 18-9-6 record. \u201cI just saw it as a great challenge. I knew I was going to be busy tonight, and I like it that way.\u201d<\/p>\n
As coach John Hynes ponders his Game 1 starter, the recent numbers will show that Wallstedt has allowed a total of four goals in his final two regular-season starts, while veteran Filip Gustavsson has been touched for 10 in the same span.<\/p>\n
Anaheim, which has qualified for the playoffs but does not yet have its opponent set, opened the scoring on a power-play goal midway through the first period. The Wild responded with Yurov\u2019s second goal in as many nights, a close-range shot that trickled past Ducks goalie Lukas Dostal.<\/p>\n
The goal was significant, if for no other reason than it meant for the first time in franchise history, the Wild went an entire regular season without being shut out. Dating back to last season, they have now tied a franchise record by scoring at least one goal in 93 consecutive regular-season games.<\/p>\n
Yurov had a golden opportunity to give Minnesota its first lead near the midway point of the game with a breakaway from the far blue line, but he was foiled by a left pad save.<\/p>\n
Instead, it was Haight, after a perfect set-up pass from Nick Foligno, popping a wrist shot past the Anaheim goalie\u2019s glove to put the Wild up. Shown on the arena\u2019s video board sporting a huge smile, Haight received a loud ovation when his first goal was announced.<\/p>\n
Centering a line with Foligno on one wing and Marcus Johansson, it was noted to Haight that he had more than 1,300 games of NHL experience on the ice with him.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s awesome. The opportunity to play with those two guys, you learn so much,\u201d said Haight, who played nine games for the Wild this season, including the first two and the last two of the regular season. \u201cJust the little details. Come back from a shift and they\u2019re giving you insight on what they see and all that. So, it\u2019s really cool.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hunter Haight #37 of the Minnesota Wild celebrates scoring his first career NHL goal in the second period against the Anaheim Ducks at Grand Casino Arena on April 14, 2026 in St Paul, Minnesota. (Photo by David Berding\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n
Haight briefly looked to have gotten the first of his career on Monday night in St. Louis. But after pushing the puck, and the Blues goalie\u2019s leg pad, over the goal line, the play was ruled no goal due to goalie interference.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m really happy for Hunter. Last night he got turned back. But, you know, he doesn\u2019t have to sit on it for another year,\u201d Hynes said. \u201cJust his development, I just really like the way he\u2019s going about his business. He\u2019s gotten better as a second-year pro.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fabbri slipped a puck over the line late in the game for some insurance. Originally ruled no goal, the call was reversed quickly when replays showed the puck had fully crossed the line. With their goalie pulled, the Ducks got a deflected goal at the 45.6 mark of the third, but Minnesota held off their late charge.<\/p>\n
Dostal had 17 saves for the Ducks.<\/p>\n
For the second straight night, the Wild sat out a significant number of regulars, with stars like Kirill Kaprizov, Matt Boldy, Brock Faber, Quinn Hughes, Mats Zuccarello and others watching from the press box.<\/p>\n
Briefly<\/p>\n
Yakov Trenin was the only member of the Wild to play in all 82 regular season games. \u2026 Prior to the game, the Wild handed out their annual Tom Kurvers Humanitarian Award, given to the Wild player who best exemplifies leadership qualities on and off the ice and has made a noteworthy humanitarian contribution in the State of Hockey. Marcus Foligno was named the winner of the award, named after the former Hobey Baker Award winner from Minnesota Duluth who was long-time NHLer and Wild executive before dying in 2021 following a battle with cancer. The award, which acknowledged the Foligno family\u2019s fundraising efforts in behalf of cancer research, includes a $5,000 donation from the team, which Foligno gifted to the Hendrickson Foundation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Minnesota Wild will be rested and generally healthy when they open the playoffs, most likely on Saturday,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":268952,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,165,164,4227,404,127],"class_list":{"0":"post-268951","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-anaheim","8":"tag-anaheim","9":"tag-anaheim-headlines","10":"tag-anaheim-news","11":"tag-minnesota-wild","12":"tag-nhl","13":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268951","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=268951"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268951\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/268952"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=268951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=268951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=268951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}