The best teams in the NHL tend to win games in multiple ways. You can’t choose who you match up against in the playoffs. Maybe you’re going up against a fast team like the Edmonton Oilers. You might wind up grinding out a series with a physical (or dirty!) team like the Florida Panthers. Withstanding all challenges will make or break a playoff run.
The Minnesota Wild had to play a certain way to knock out the Dallas Stars. They couldn’t rely on special teams to turn the tide. Dallas’ power play was too good, and Minnesota’s penalty kill sucked something awful in Round 1. Their only shot was to make up the difference at 5-on-5. Clog up the neutral and defensive zones, and use their bangers to wear down the Stars until they lose their will to play.
The Wild will try to play the Colorado Avalanche similarly at 5-on-5, for sure. But the formula that beat Dallas will not beat Colorado.
It’s important to understand why the Wild prevailed in Round 1. Minnesota was able to lean into Dallas’ biggest weakness, relatively speaking. The Stars finished the season ranked 21st in expected goals for per hour at 5-on-5. A top-10 defense and top-two power play made that shortcoming irrelevant in the regular season, but the Wild were able to key in on it in a short series. When Jesper Wallstedt heated up, the Stars couldn’t get the volume of quality shots to break through.
The Wild can check Colorado hard in this series. They can try pushing play to the outside, jamming up the middle, and hoping Wallstedt can stay on top of his game. But Minnesota will not be able to bully the President’s Trophy winners at 5-on-5.
The Avs were one of the most dominant 5-on-5 teams in recent memory. On a per-hour basis, they finished first in goals for (3.30), first in goals allowed (1.95), tied for first in expected goals (3.33), and fourth in expected goals allowed (2.50). Even after the Quinn Hughes trade changed the makeup of the Wild, Colorado was the superior 5-on-5 squad.
If the Wild rely on the 5-on-5 part of the game to win this series, they likely either have to get lucky or have Wallstedt steal the series.
No, for Minnesota to advance to their first Western Conference Final since 2003, they’ll need to flip the script on how they played in Round 1. They’re going to have to be Dallas, pushing for an edge on the power play.
Despite going just 4-for-25 (16%) on the man advantage in Round 1, Minnesota has what it takes to dominate on special teams. The Stars had the second-best power play in the NHL this season, humming at 28.6%. It’s a mark bested by only four teams in the Salary Cap Era, and three of those teams were versions of the Connor McDavid/Leon Draisaitl Edmonton Oilers.
Minnesota was third, with a sizable gap, at 25.2% success rate. However, that doesn’t account for the difference Hughes made. During the superstar defenseman’s 48 games with the Wild, they went 40-for-142, making for a power play percentage of… 28.2%. Over the course of a full season, we’d be talking about a power play unit that is tied for the eighth-best in the Cap Era.
The Wild could press their advantage against the Stars in 5-on-5 play. However, they’ll need to rely on 5-on-4 (or 5-on-3, or 4-on-3) plays to make up the likely difference against Colorado at full strength. That won’t be an easy task. The Avs had the best success rate on the penalty kill in the regular season, at 84.6%.
Colorado has had a top-five forward (Nathan MacKinnon) and a top-two defenseman (Cale Makar) since the 2019 playoffs. Still, they have advanced to the Western Conference Final only once in their last seven playoff runs. Their two most recent losses were to the Stars, and the main reason was Dallas’ power play ran amok.
The Stars scored on 7 of their 23 chances in their first-round victory in 2025 (30.4%) and went 5-for-17 (29.4%) in the second round in 2024. That punch on the man advantage especially swung the series toward Dallas last spring, when the Avs out-scored the Stars 14-to-11 at 5-on-5.
Minnesota’s power play can do the same, especially since Colorado’s unit is lethal on paper but listless in practice. The Avalanche converted only 17.1% of their opportunities, ranking 27th in the NHL, and their expected goals per hour on the man advantage ranked 24th. Neither their success rate nor their underlying numbers improved in Round 1 against the Los Angeles Kings.
The Wild will strive to play to their identity, defined partially by hard-nosed players like Marcus Foligno, Ryan Hartman, and Michael McCarron. But an essential part of this year’s Wild’s identity is a power play led by Hughes, Kaprizov, and Matt Boldy‘s superstar talents. If Minnesota can’t lean into that aspect of their game and get some easy goals with the extra man, it’ll be hard to see a path forward in this postseason.
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