Hockey Wilderness
A Minnesota Wild Blog that WON'T make you sick and kill you!
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The Wild Have To Finish the Story In Game 6
On Tuesday night, the Minnesota Wild played one of their most professional games of the season. Led by Mats Zuccarello’s return and a suffocating defensive effort, the Wild scored a 4-2 victory over the Dallas Stars and took a 3-2 lead in their first-round Western Conference series. It sets up...
Wild Just One Win Away From Slaying The Dragon
A dark cloud has been hovering over this Minnesota Wild team for a while now. They have suffered nine straight first-round exits. The last time they were able to win a playoff round was back in 2015, and then they promptly got swept by the Chicago Blackhawks as the reward for it. Whether it was batt...
A Different Minnesota Wild Won Game 5
The Minnesota Wild can't pop the champagne yet. Historically, road teams that win Game 5 to go up 3-2 win 77.4% of playoff series, but the door is open for the Dallas Stars to make a comeback if the Wild aren't careful. However, the Wild we saw in Tuesday night's 4-2 win to seize control of th...
How Will the Wild Handle the Wallstedt-Gustavsson Situation Long-Term?
The Minnesota Wild are in the middle of a knockdown, drag-out playoff series with the rival Dallas Stars. Many players on the team deserve recognition for their contributions to the 2-2 series deadlock. Matt Boldy is emerging as a superstar, and Brock Faber has made significant strides. Still, perha...
Kirill Kaprizov Has Been Quietly Dominant Against Dallas
When playoff time rolls around and the regular season moves farther back into the rearview, the things we know about players and teams become true only insofar as they happen now. Whether a player thrives or fails in a playoff season becomes a key part of the narrative that shapes their value and st...
Game 5 Will Be the Ultimate Test of Whether the Wild Are Different
The date is April 24, 2015. The Minnesota Wild went into Scottrade Center, recovered from an early goal-against from then-superstar Vladimir Tarasenko, and methodically hung four goals on the St. Louis Blues. Marco Scandella, Nino Niederreiter, Mikko Koivu, and Charlie Coyle were your scorers that d...
The Quinn Hughes Effect Is Alive and Well This Postseason
Entering the postseason, the Minnesota Wild's hopes for success more or less boiled down to: They have Quinn Hughes this time. It was a great reason for hope. Wild fans watched the superstar defenseman elevate their favorite team for 48 games this season, supercharging the power play and picki...
Wild But True: Not All Champions Are Found On The Cup
In such a close opening playoff series, this may not be the time to be talking about the Minnesota Wild and what things will look like if they do, in fact, claim their first Stanley Cup. However, a topic that always comes up as the playoffs begin to play down is, Who actually gets their name on Lord...
Why Can't the Wild Score On the Power Play Without Zuccarello?
Mats Zuccarello’s injury has quietly become one of the biggest reasons the Minnesota Wild’s first-round series has swung in the Dallas Stars’ favor. The Wild looked sharp in Game 1, but once Zuccarello exited the lineup, their power play lost its most important connector, and the offense became far...
Wild's Offensive Depth Came Up Big
That's Wild Leave it to heartbeat of the Minnesota Wild Marcus Foligno to come up big when it mattered. Down by one goal in the third period, the grinding winger scored the equalizing goal which then forced the overtime in which Matt Boldy scored his game-winner, for the Wild to take Game 4...
The Wild Showed Everyone This Series Is Far From Over
The Minnesota Wild needed every second of overtime to finish off the Dallas Stars, and Matt Boldy delivered the payoff with a late-tip-in that gave the Wild a 3-2 win in Game 4. It was the kind of playoff game that felt close from the opening faceoff to the final shot. Both teams traded chances, mom...
Jesper Wallstedt Delivered the Wild From Oblivion (Again) in Game 4
If the Minnesota Wild can turn themselves from perennial also-rans to a legitimate Stanley Cup contender, December 12, 2025, will be seen as the turning point. Of course it will. That's when the Wild made the Quinn Hughes trade, bringing the transformative defenseman into the fold. But t...
Filip Gustavsson Isn’t Cam Talbot (But He Is Swedish)
While Minnesota Wild fans waited with bated breath for Game 4 of the playoffs, they apparently decided that there wasn’t enough to complain about. Well, good thing The Athletic published a bullet point in one of their articles that spurred on an entire morning’s worth of idiotic discourse....
The Mats Zuccarello Replacement Was Staring Us In the Face
The Minnesota Wild’s Game 3 performance has fans reeling. After the Wild’s man-advantage unit took over Game 1, they crashed back to earth. Quinn Hughes and Kirill Kaprizov played about 12 minutes each at five-on-four, and the only power play goal came from Marcus Johansson. That’s nothing sho...
Danila Yurov Is the Logical Next Choice For the Kirill Kaprizov Carousel
The Minnesota Wild enter Saturday in a 2-1 hole, and a big reason is that the Dallas Stars have been able to bottle up Kirill Kaprizov in Games 2 and 3. In over an hour of ice time between his previous two contests, Kaprizov has a lone assist and four shots on goal. He's laid both those eggs without...
The Wild Should Ditch the Four-Forward Power Play For Game 4
The revolution is over. Almost every team in the NHL has embraced the practice of putting four forwards on the power play. Statistically, it's the best bet. Forwards almost always have more shooting talent than defensemen, and getting pucks down low is a much better play than having a defenseman roc...
How Did the Wild Handle A Bad Whistle?
The Minnesota Wild came away from Game 3 with a heartbreaking loss, but the final score only tells part of the story. The game had the kind of intensity you expect in the playoffs, yet it also had a growing sense that the officials were letting too much go in one direction. Dallas managed to survive...
Mats Zuccarello Can't Be the Piece That Topples the Jenga Tower
It's hard to remember back to October and November. Back before the playoffs, before the Quinn Hughes trade, before Jesper Wallstedt broke out as a season savior, and when Marco Rossi and Zeev Buium roamed the ice. But if you go all the way back, you'll see a team that looks kind of like they do now...
The Complex Anatomy Of Danila Yurov's Rookie Mistake
It started with a poised play. A 22-year-old rookie, in his first-ever Stanley Cup playoff series, on the ice in double overtime of a pivotal Game 3. His team, on its heels, hemmed in their own zone for the entirety of the rookie’s 54-second shift. The shift started in his own zone, on the fly....
Wild's Special Teams Performance Can Mean Another First-Round Exit
That's Wild The major story coming out of Game 3 against the Dallas Stars was the Minnesota Wild's special teams failing them when they needed to get the save. Both the power play could've scored more goals and the penalty kill could've prevented some. [Pioneer Press] Even more coverag...
The Minnesota Wild Still Have Fight Left
The Minnesota Wild walked out of last night’s game with a loss, but not with their season hanging by a thread. A series can shift quickly in the playoffs, and this one still has plenty of hockey left to play. The Wild have already shown they can make the Dallas Stars uncomfortable, and if they clean...
Game 3 Highlighted Some Of the Wild’s Roster Flaws
There’s a flaw in the rulebook if Matt Boldy can take a shot to the head outside of the play, and the officials don’t penalize Jamie Benn for it. On the TNT broadcast, Paul Bissonnette insisted that Benn didn’t intend to injure Boldy. You can see how he came to that conclusion. Benn appears to...
Wild's Game 3 Loss Should Not Erase Insane Matt Boldy Play
Look, it's hard to find any joy when the Minnesota Wild just suffered an overtime loss in Game 3 to hand the Dallas Stars a 2-1 series lead and now we're thinking really bad thoughts about another first-round exit. But, the play that Matt Boldy made to tie the game 2-2 in the second period on Wednes...
The Wild Have Only Themselves To Blame For Game 3's Loss
The Minnesota Wild entered the postseason with a team billed as ready to withstand the rigors of playoff hockey. Adding Quinn Hughes raised the team's ceiling higher than at any time in franchise history. Bringing in Michael McCarron and Nick Foligno gave them large, battle-tested veterans tailor-ma...
The Wild's Fourth Line Is Creating Room For Skill Players
The Minnesota Wild’s first-round playoff matchup has quickly become a series defined by pace, pressure, and pain, and the fourth line has been at the center of that identity shift. While the Wild’s stars have carried the scoring load, their bottom unit has done something just as important: It has ma...
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