LAS VEGAS — A veteran like Ryan Hartman didn’t need any kind of refresher course on the physical rigors of playoff hockey, but he was handed a one course anyway in the Minnesota Wild’s Game 1 loss to Vegas on Sunday night.
Hartman was knocked down, knocked over, tripped up, boarded and cross-checked to the face. Only one of those affronts (the boarding) merited a penalty on the Golden Knights, drawing the ire of Wild fans and some national pundits who felt that Vegas got away with some dirty play.
Hartman has been suspended numerous times in his career, most recently when he missed eight games in February and March for disciplinary reasons. With that reputation preceding him, there was speculation that the physical play directed his way may have been strategic on Vegas’ part, trying to elicit a retaliation.
Hartman, to his credit, was having none of it on Sunday. Asked if more should have been called, he noted that both teams had a power play, although technically the Golden Knights had two.
“You know, you’ve just gotta bite your tongue and keep going. I think that’s the biggest thing,” teammate Marcus Foligno said on Monday while praising Hartman for keeping his cool. “I think he understands it and there’s gonna be things that don’t get called for him, and I think that he’s in that mindset where he’s like, ‘OK, this is how it’s gonna go, then I just got suck it up and and just play for the team.’ ”
Centering the team’s fourth line between Yakov Trenin and Justin Brazeau, Hartman logged more than 14 minutes with three of the team’s shots on goal, and three of the team’s 54 hits, in a 4-2 loss t T-Mobile Arena.
“That’s what you need. I thought it was channeling his competitive nature the right way,” Wild coach John Hynes said Monday afternoon. “I think he was one guy that I felt played a strong game. Loved the discipline that he played with when he could have (gone) off the rails. But I think that’s a good message to our team, too, that he’s willing to sacrifice those things for the good of the team. And his mindset was he just played.
“Regardless of what happened to him last night, he played and competed the right way.”
No blaming the stripes
Vegas set an NHL record in 2024-25 with just 197 penalties in 82 games, the cleanest regular season in league history. Although it was clear from some of the plays on Sunday, not just directed at Hartman, that just because a team isn’t called for penalties does not always mean they’re not committing them.
But if Wild fans want an excuse for the loss, their coach said to look somewhere else.
“I thought the refs did a good job last night, to be honest,” Hynes said, pointing out that there is a more thorough game review system and more access to officials in the playoffs. “The way it goes is if there’s certain things that you see or certain things that (Vegas coach) Bruce (Cassidy) sees, and he wants to bring up, then you bring them up to the supervisor, and he’ll give you the answers that you need. I think you know you don’t get as much of that in the regular season.”
Hynes did say after the game that he thought Wild center Marco Rossi was interfered with on the penalty kill faceoff that Vegas won to set up a power play goal.
While the Wild have not gotten a reputation for stellar special teams play this season, they feel that if this is a let-them-play kind of series, and they can play more five-on-five, it’s to Minnesota’s benefit.
“I’ve always been a fan of 5-on-5 hockey, right?” said defenseman Jake Middleton. “I don’t get to play on the power play, and (penalty) kill’s always a little nerve wracking. For hockey games to be decided by penalties always kind of (stinks). You want to play best-on-best, five-on-five hockey and I thought the way the game was officiated last night was great. You always want a little more, but we got away with some, too.”
With Matt Boldy in the penalty box when Vegas scored into an empty net in the final second of Sunday’s game, the Golden Knights were officially 2-2 on the power play in the series opener, while Minnesota went 0-1.
Black Aces inbound from Iowa
The NHL allows for expanded rosters in the playoffs, meaning that the Wild locker room and ice sheet will be a bit more crowded when they get back to Minnesota for Game 3 and beyond.
On Monday, the team announced that eight players are on their way from Des Moines. The call-ups are nicknamed “Black Aces,” a moniker that dates back to 1940.
The players recalled by the Wild include forwards Travis Boyd, Brendan Gaunce, Hunter Haight, Ben Jones and Liam Ohgren, defensemen Cameron Crotty and Carson Lambos and goaltender Samual Hlavaj.
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