The official schedule released around lunchtime on Thursday shows the Minnesota Wild opening the 2025 NHL playoffs at 9 p.m. CT on Easter Sunday, in Las Vegas versus the Golden Knights.
But with the 20 guys in red and green spending the past few weeks fighting tooth and nail for every available standings point, and needing 81 games, 59 minutes and 48 seconds to secure their place among the 16 teams still playing, it feels like the playoffs began sometime in late March.
“I think that’s gonna help us, big time, just being in that mindset,” Wild forward Marcus Foligno said, following their last full practice in St. Paul on Thursday morning. “I think the last two playoffs, we’ve gone into it a little bit loose. Not saying that’s wrong, but when you rest guys, you get away from that mentality of the pressure games. I feel like what we’ve been doing for the past month is gonna help us and pay dividends.”
If not for Joel Eriksson Ek’s tying goal with less than 30 seconds left in the regular season finale on Tuesday, the Wild would have spent Thursday night glued to the TV, hoping for a Kings win versus Calgary to get Minnesota into the playoffs. Instead, they took care of it on their own.
The Wild faced the Golden Knights three times in the regular season at lost each time, 3-2 in St. Paul in December, 4-1 in Vegas in January, and 5-1 at Xcel Energy Center in March in a close game that slipped away late. One Wild defenseman noted that all three if those games were on the second of back-to-backs.
So, the Wild hope having extra rest and time to focus on one opponent will make a difference in April.
John Hynes made the playoffs once with the Devils in his four full seasons in New Jersey. His Predators teams played in the postseason in three out of his four seasons in Nashville. Now he has the Wild in the playoffs in his first full season in Minnesota. While Hynes has yet to get a team past Round 1, he said that the character of a playoff series changes notably from game to game. And, he said, those are situations his team has been feeling for weeks now.
“Game 1, people are going to be nervous. You’ve got to go in and play. And then all of sudden everything changes,” he said. “Dynamics change, and eventually there’s going to be a differentiating game in the series, where you can get to that third game and then there’s a close-out game. And there’s a mentality you deal with the night before a game, playing through it.
“We’ve had multiple opportunities to test ourselves, and some of them we’ve come through and some of them we haven’t. So, I think at least for us going into this series, we’ve had to fight to get there and it’s going to be no different in the series.”
PLAYOFF SCHEDULE
The NHL announced the dates for all of the Wild’s first-round, best-of-seven series against Vegas, and times and TV for the first four. All times CDT.
GAME 1: Sunday at Vegas, 9 p.m.,
GAME 2: Tuesday at Vegas, 10 p.m.
GAME 3: Thursday at Xcel Energy Center, 8 p.m,
GAME 4: Saturday at Xcel Energy Center, 3 p.m.
GAME 5: Tuesday at Vegas, TBD (if necessary)
GAME 6: Thursday at Xcel Energy Center, TBD (if necessary)
GAME 7: Tuesday at Vegas, TBD (if necessary)
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