Another first-round exit for Wild feels like a broken record: We failed them

ST. PAUL, Minn — The Wild insisted this year would be different.

They were mentally and physically tougher. Their latest playoff scar — blowing a 2-1 series lead to the Blues last spring — had hardened them. Taught them important lessons. They were built for playoff hockey. 

This was their chance to prove it.

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And they failed miserably.

Stunningly. 

It was unacceptable. 

And their fans let them hear it, with a smattering of boos from the emptying arena in the final minute of a 4-1, season-ending loss to the Stars in Game 6.

“I’m sick to my stomach about it,” Ryan Hartman said. “This city deserves better than what we gave them. We failed them, and it feels like s—.”

“It just sucks in general,” captain Jared Spurgeon said. “Everything.”

“A brutal feeling,” Marcus Foligno said. “We grind all the way to get to the playoffs, and we can’t get out of the first round again. Broken record.”

There’s a ton to unpack for why this franchise hasn’t won a playoff round since 2015, and plenty of difficult decisions are looming this summer. GM Bill Guerin isn’t expected to blow up the roster or fire coach Dean Evason, and he doesn’t have much cap space to make necessary upgrades.

So the biggest question is this: What is the reason to believe next year will end differently?

What made this series so frustrating for the Wild was that it followed a similar script to the Blues loss. The Wild’s special teams, including a porous penalty kill, were the biggest culprit, giving up nine power-play goals in six games. They lost three straight games after taking a 2-1 series lead. They made another questionable goalie decision, inserting Marc-Andre Fleury for his only start in a Game 2 loss. 

The Stars goalie, Lakeville’s Jake Oettinger, was the best player in the series, giving up just one goal in the final two games. Dallas was the more poised team, the better-coached team, the more disciplined team. And, unlike the Wild, their top guys delivered. Kirill Kaprizov, who racked up 40 goals in the regular season, went the final 373 minutes, without a point. Matt Boldy had zero goals and three points. Spurgeon was on the ice for 14 of the Stars’ 21 goals. Jonas Brodin was on for nine. 

It had to be a particularly painful twist of the knife for Ryan Suter — bought out by the Wild a few years ago — to play well in this series. Suter’s cross-checks on Kaprizov in Games 1 and 2 certainly had their effect, and he had just one fewer point than Boldy.

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The Wild weren’t expected to be Cup contenders considering the cap constraints following the Suter and Zach Parise buyouts — which will count for $14.7 million against the cap in each of the next two seasons. But Minnesota was good enough to challenge for the conference and division titles until a slide in the last couple weeks of the regular season. Guerin certainly expected more than a one-and-done when he was a buyer at the deadline, bringing in John Klingberg, Marcus Johansson, Oskar Sundqvist and Gustav Nyquist.

“I don’t think we were favored to win the Stanley Cup,” Mats Zuccarello said. “But we had all the belief we could progress and get through the first round and then take the next round and see what happens.”

Injuries definitely played a role in the early exit. Their top center, Joel Eriksson Ek, played just 19 seconds in this series after aggravating a leg injury in Game 3, forcing him to watch the season-ending game in a walking boot. Heart-and-souler Mason Shaw, a key penalty killer, was on crutches after a late-season ACL tear. Kaprizov, though he won’t admit it, was banged up. Hartman was dealing with a significant lower-body injury. Zuccarello was a game-time decision for Game 6 after missing back-to-back skates.

We’ll find out the extent of these injuries early next week at exit meetings.

“No excuses,” Zuccarello said. “If you can go, you go. I was good enough to go.”

The Wild looked like they were good enough to change the narrative after their double-overtime victory in Game 1 in Dallas. But they got blown out in Game 2 after the curious decision to start Fleury — his only start of the series — because it was what they did during the regular season. They rallied to win Game 3 at home, but blew a chance to take control of the series in a 3-2 loss in Game 4. The two Foligno “penalties” changed the tenor of that game, but it wasn’t the only reason for the loss.

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“I mean, we were chasing them throughout the series,” Tyler Seguin said. “Once we tied it up, we wanted to take back momentum.”

“We’ve got to find a way to put it away,” Spurgeon said.

For as much resilience the Wild showed through the regular season, including going on a 16-1-4 run after stumbling out of the All-Star break, they lacked the necessary pushback when they needed it the most in Friday’s elimination game. It was a gut punch when Hartman nearly scored early in the first on a goal-mouth scramble (broken up by Suter), then Roope Hintz went the other way for the game’s first goal. The team that scored first won all six games in this series.

“I’ve watched it 100 times in slow motion between periods and a rolling puck as soon as I go to push it into the net it bounces over my blade and their defenseman whacks it off their goalie’s foot and then it goes and hits the post,” Hartman said. “And they f—ing score right after. So I mean obviously that one’s tough.”

There was a noticeable sag by the Wild after that, specifically in the second period, when they were outshot 18-5. They couldn’t get anything going, with the Stars snuffing out their forecheck and smothering any chance of shots from the inside. And when Minnesota finally got one, a Zuccarello wrist shot off the rush in the final 10 seconds, he airmailed it, which led to Mason Marchment’s back-breaking, buzzer-beating goal.

The three-goal cushion was more than enough against a Wild team starving for offense, including a 4-for-22 power play.

“All year, we struggled to score goals, as you guys know,” Evason said. “Last year we scored a ton. We tried all year to figure out why, what the difference was. And we dove into a bunch of different things. But there are a lot of things to talk about, to think about here, before grinding it out again.”

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There will be much discussion and debate over what went wrong, and what changes to make. While Evason appears safe, it’ll be interesting if there are other staff changes, specifically as far as the special teams are concerned. Matt Dumba likely played his final game with the Wild, with the pending unrestricted free agent missing the third period with an upper-body injury. Fleury said he plans to come back for at least one more year, and that might be it. He’ll probably be more of a backup to Filip Gustavsson, whose breakout season ended with three straight losses and getting pulled after the second period.

Gustavsson, a pending RFA with arbitration rights, has a contract to get done, and it might not be easy. That will have a ripple effect on the offseason. The Wild have to address the blue line, especially with Dumba’s exit, though rookie Brock Faber showed in his impressive debut that he could be ready to be Brodin’s partner next year. The Gophers captain wasn’t on the ice for any of the Stars’ goals this series.

There are a lot of likable characters in a close-knit Wild room. There are some young stars to build around, though they’re going to need more from Kaprizov and Boldy next time around. Their philosophy of “Grit First” is fine, but can scoring — or special teams — be a close second?

Zuccarello said this year felt different because he thought they were a better team than the Stars — unlike last year’s defeat to the Blues. But ending the season before the calendar turns to May shouldn’t be an annual thing.

Did this one feel any different than last year?

“It’s early, right? A lot of similarities,” Evason said. “Were we a little more resilient this year? I think so, right away without diving right into it and we handled a lot of adversity throughout the series here. We played hard, like I said. It wasn’t like we rolled over or anything like that. We were in every hockey game as far as our compete level. So, yeah, I think we improved in that area. But obviously, there’s a lot of areas that were the same.”

(Photo: Bailey Hillesheim / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

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