Like the good adopted Minnesotan that he has become since taking over the Wild coaching reins in November 2023, John Hynes now makes his home on a lake and knows how to sprinkle in a fishing analogy when talking about the ups and downs his team has faced this season.
A few months into the current season, the Wild looked like shoo-ins for the playoffs. But with injuries to key players, the Wild had to scratch and claw to the very end to get that “x” next to their name in the standings, clinched with Joel Eriksson Ek’s goal 21 seconds left in their final regular season game.
Hynes feels those tooth-and-nail battles between October and March can be helpful in April and May.
“Our experience down the stretch probably wasn’t fun going through it; you’d like to be in with seven or eight games left in the season,” he said prior to Game 4 of the current playoff series versus Vegas. “It was right there. It’s like we couldn’t get the fish in the boat fast enough, but we had to stay with it. We couldn’t look ahead. We couldn’t want to get that ‘x’ next to our name without going through the process.”
Roughly 18,000 fans left Xcel Energy Center disappointed early Saturday evening following an entertaining but ultimately losing effort by the Wild, who missed a chance to take a 3-1 series lead in a 4-3 overtime loss to the Vegas Knights. Leading 2-1 after two periods, the Wild gave up a pair of third-period goals and lost for the first time this season when heading into the final period with a lead.
They were the only NHL team with a perfect record (29-0-0) when leading at the start of the third, and had led after two in their two playoff victories over Vegas. Two of the Knights’ goals, including the tying goal early in the third, came on power plays.
Minnesota’s penalty kill, among the NHL’s worst for much of the regular season, has come through at vital moments in this series but still ranks 13th among the 16 playoff teams in negating opponent power plays, allowing four so far. But Hynes still found reason for optimism as his team heads back to Las Vegas with the series tied 2-2.
The tying goal on Saturday came with 8 seconds left in a 4-minute high-sticking minor on defenseman Zeev Buium.
“I think the kill’s in a really good spot,” Hynes said. “… A couple went in, even the (second) one that went in, we had two opportunities to clear it. We just didn’t get some bounces tonight, to be honest, even on the kill in some of those. We got good saves, we had good attention to detail, we killed well.”
To the cynical, that might sound like denial, but it’s also instructive to flash back to September, when there were few who picked Minnesota to make the playoffs. In a preseason scrum with reporters, Wild owner Craig Leipold talked primarily about July 2025, and the team’s freedom from eight figures of dead salary cap space that will allow general manager Bill Guerin to at least have a conversation with some of the top pending free agents.
As recently as a week ago, the numbers-crunching website MoneyPuck.com gave the Wild the smallest percentage chance of a second-round game among the 16 playoff teams. Minnesota hasn’t played in the second round since 2015.
But even after missing out on a chance to take a 3-1 series lead, there was no disappointment in Hynes’ tone Saturday night, and he expressed unshakable confidence in his team and their current circumstances with a road game Tuesday followed by a guaranteed home game.
“You look at the way we played, you could arguably say there were a couple bounces that didn’t go our way,” he said. “But I think when you look at it, the way we play and where we’re at in the series and where we’re going — just stay with it, keep going. We knew it was going to be (tough). The longer the series goes for us, coming into the series we’re like, ‘Keep it going, keep it going, keep it going.’ Here we are. Love it.”
Or, in an analogy most Minnesotans — native or adopted — will understand, even when the walleye aren’t biting right away, there’s no such thing as a bad day fishing.
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