It’s Time for the Wild’s Core To Close Out A Series – Minnesota Wild

Winning is hard.

Winning in the NHL? That’s especially challenging.

But winning in the NHL Playoffs? Well, just ask the State of Hockey how difficult that can be.

However, after another exciting win, this time in St. Paul, the Minnesota Wild are up 2-1 in their opening-round series against the vaunted Vegas Golden Knights.

They’ve done so off the backs of their superstars in Kirill Kaprizov and Matt Boldy, as well as Filip Gustavsson’s rock steady in net. For a team almost nobody predicted to win the series, they are making the 2023 Cup champs look confused and defeated.

Still, they’ve also been in this exact spot before. In their last two playoff appearances before this season, the Wild were up 2-1 after Game 3. And each time they collapsed to lose in six games, with many of those same names above playing key roles on those teams.

It’s time for the Wild’s core to learn what it takes to close out a series in the playoffs.

I’m not slighting where the Wild are right now. Something feels different this time around, for sure. They’ve dominated the supposedly superior Golden Knights in the last two games. They’ve shut down Vegas’ top players, and the Wild’s stars are shining bright.

It’s one thing to be up early in a series. It’s another level entirely for the Wild to do what it takes to close out the Pacific Division Champions.

In 2022, the Wild beat St. Louis 5-1 in game three to take a 2-1 series lead, and then the Blues took the next three consecutively as the Wild’s penalty kill and goaltending torpedoed their chances.

The next season, Minnesota was again up 2-1 in their series against the Dallas Stars, on the backs of yet another 5-1 win in game three. Then Dallas won each of the next three games to close the series. This time, goaltending and a dried-up offense were their downfall.

Goaltending. Star players fading out. Special teams disasters. No matter the main culprit, each time this core of Wild players has faltered when they were so well positioned.

Not this time.

Now is the time for the post-Zach Parise and Ryan Suter era Minnesota Wild to learn how to take the next step in their Stanley Cup aspirations and win a series for the first time in nearly a decade.

Will the Wild suddenly become Cup favorites if they extinguish the Knights? No, but that’s not the point. This team will realistically compete in the next few years as the Parise-Suter dead cap hits come off the books.

But that doesn’t mean they have to delay their development. Take a look around the league at the perennial contenders, and each of them has a core of players who had to learn together how difficult it is to close out a series or two in the playoffs.

The defending Stanley Cup champion Florida Panthers made a splash into the contending world in 2022-23 by making a surprising run to the Stanley Cup final before falling to Vegas. They came back the next year to win it all. However, their playoff appearances before those two runs set the table. The year before they made their Cup run, the Panthers lost in the second round.

It was their first time escaping the first round since 2011-12. But after back-to-back first-round exits, they finally understood what it took to win a series. That core of Sasha Barkov, Sam Bennett, Aaron Ekblad, and (eventually) Matthew Tkachuk needed to learn together what it took to be more than just a fun playoff team.

Before Florida, there was the Golden Knights, of course. They went to the Cup finals in their first year, but it was a long and painful road back to the Cup Finals when they won it all in 2022-23. You don’t think making run after run in the playoffs didn’t teach their core what it meant to elevate their game to win and advance?

Before the warm-weather cities started staking their names on Lord Stanley, the Colorado Avalanche needed year after year of playoff success and heartbreak to get there. Before their Cup win in 2021-22, the Avalanche had lost in the second round of the playoffs three years in a row. But each year, every time they advanced, they learned something new about their core.

I could go on and on and on. The point is that teams don’t just miraculously compete for a Stanley Cup out of the blue one season, no matter how much dead money comes off their salary cap books. Nearly every top contender in the NHL this season has spent the past two, three, or maybe even more seasons advancing a little further each and every year.

Winning Lord Stanley is a test of attrition, and that’s precisely why this Wild team must find a way not to squander another 2-1 series lead they have thoroughly dominated to this point. It’s not so we can have added hope of being that much closer to scheduling a parade through downtown St. Paul this summer.

They have to because it’s the next evolution in this team building towards a true Cup run in the next few seasons. Failing to close out Vegas now would only delay their development as a core even more.

No more excuses. No more almost. It’s time for the Wild’s newest core of star players to discover what it takes to survive and advance.

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