The Minnesota Wild suffered yet another early playoff exit, this time coming at the hands of the Dallas Stars.
The first round series wrapped on Friday, with the Stars defeating the Wild in six games. It marks eight years since the Wild have made it out of the first round of the playoffs and 20 years since they've advanced past the second round.
Below, we take a look at the three reasons the Wild lost to the Stars in the first round of the NHL playoffs.
3. Lack of Impact From Kirill Kaprizov
Usually to win a series, a team's best players need to perform like their best players.
Unfortunately, a big storyline was Kirill Kaprizov's disappointing performance. While the Stars got huge offense from their top players like Roope Hintz and Jason Robertson, Kaprizov managed a single point (one power play goal) in the series. For a player like Kaprizov, who scored at an 82-game pace of about 50 goals and 90 points this year, it was an unacceptable result.
It wasn't just him though. Matthew Boldy, who scored 31 goals this season, didn't have a goal in the series. He tallied just three points total. Then it also didn't help the team was without Joel Eriksson Ek.. A defensive center who can produce offensively, not having Eriksson Ek for basically the entire series was a huge loss.
Kaprizov, Boldy and Eriksson Ek were the team's top three goal scorers this season. So to not get a single even strength goal from their top players was a pretty much impossible to overcome.
2. Limited Scoring
Throughout the series, the Wild scored just 14 goals across six games. Even worse, they managed only three goals over the final three games.
The Wild had struggled to score throughout the regular season as well, ranking 23rd in goals per game.. It was a massive drop-off from the 2021-22 season, where Minnesota ranked fifth in the category.
A key factor in this was the team losing Kevin Fiala in the offseason. Fiala had posted 33 goals and 85 points with the Wild last season and emerged as one of the team's best players. However, he was dealt the Los Angeles Kings in the offseason, as a result of the Wild's cap crunch. Minnesota never managed to replace the offense he provided.
The team actually did make moves to add more offense at the trade deadline. They acquired Gustav Nyquist, Marcus Johansson, Oskar Sundqvist and defenseman John Klingberg. However, they never quite managed to get enough of a boost to their scoring.
Mats Zuccarello, Ryan Hartman and Gustav Nyquist each managed five points, but that's just too few players producing at a high level to win a series.
The Wild also didn't get a ton of depth scoring either. Apart from John Klingberg, they had very little offense coming from the blue line. Jared Spurgeon and Matt Dumba each had two assists, while Jonas Brodin went pointless.
You do have to give credit to Jake Oettinger, who was excellent for the Stars. He posted a .929 save percentage and came up with timely saves.
However, it's not like the goaltending matchup was wildly lopsided, even with Oettinger's play. Filip Gustavsson managed a .921 save percentage across five games, and while there was the puzzling decision to Marc-Andre Fleury in Game 2, that's far from the reason the Wild lost the series.
1. Wild Special Teams
When the Wild were given chances to convert on the man advantage, they had a tough time capitalizing. Operating at just 18 percent, Minnesota scored on four of 22 opportunities in the series.
While Minnesota's power play was lackluster, it was still a step above their penalty kill.
The Wild's penalty kill operated at just 63 percent in the playoffs, allowing nine goals across 24 shorthanded instances. For a team who was able to kill off 82 percent of penalties in the regular season, it was a massive issue. To be fair, the Star's power play did rank fifth in the NHL during the regular season, operating at 25 percent. But when a team like the Wild isn't scoring, they better be able to at least shut down their opponents.
Minnesota also didn't help themselves with their penalty trouble, either. The 24 power plays they gave Dallas was the third-most any first round team had. The Los Angeles Kings, Seattle Kraken and Carolina Hurricanes all surrendered 18 power plays or less through six first round games.
Special teams can be a difference-maker, and it certainly was in this series.
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