Stars, Wild have had plenty of time for 'advance prepping' of Western 1st Round series

The Dallas Stars and Minnesota Wild have known since it became official on April 7 that they were guaranteed to face each other in the Western Conference First Round.

The two teams have unofficially been preparing for the matchup for much longer than that.

"We did advance prepping," Stars coach Glen Gulutzan said. "It didn't take long into March that you could see the way the schedule was trending, so we did start to shift gears a little bit. We had our video coaches and our analytics guys focusing in on mostly Minnesota and a little bit of Colorado. We've been preparing probably for the last month or six weeks."

The Stars and Wild will play Game 1 at American Airlines Center on Saturday (5:30 p.m. ET; ESPN, SN, TVAS).

Dallas moved ahead of Minnesota into second place in the Central Division on Feb. 28, and it stayed that way through the end of the season, a stretch of 48 days.

The two teams have occupied second and third place in the division regardless of order every day since Nov. 21, a stretch of 148 days.

"It's been almost since the Olympic break that you had an idea that this was going to be the matchup, and we're excited for it," Wild captain Jared Spurgeon said. "Unless something crazy happened, you had an idea and it was about trying to find out home-ice advantage."

The Stars locked up second place on April 11, two days after a 5-4 win against the Wild.

"It's nice to have played them to get a taste of that last week," Stars forward Wyatt Johnston said. "Knowing we were playing them definitely allows us to prepare a little more."

Gulutzan said the Stars' prep for the Wild played out organically over the past few weeks.

They would be preparing for their next opponent and showing video, but when the coaching staff found a similarity between that opponent and the Wild, it became a point of emphasis in the prescout meetings.

"To be really fair, we've showed video even back seven, eight games ago basically saying, 'Hey, this is what we know is similar to Minnesota, so let's dial in on this,'" Gulutzan said. "You look at Buffalo (a 4-3 shootout win on Wednesday), when we were going into our prep there, we didn't know who was playing, but they've got (Rasmus) Dahlin, (Bowen) Byram, those mobile 'D,' and we're like, 'OK, we see similarities in their mobile 'D' to Minnesota's.' So, probably eight or nine games we've played at times we would show stuff that is applicable to Minnesota. Any similarity we saw in systems we would say, 'OK, just remember, this is probably what we're going to face.'"

Gulutzan said it fueled more engagement from the players in video sessions.

"No offense, when you're talking about a team that is out of the playoffs and you're saying, 'Hey, they do this, they do that,' you can hear, 'Wah wah wah wah,'" he said. "But if we saw something with that team and we said something like, 'Hey, this is exactly what (Minnesota) or Colorado does,' it would always perk up our guys' attention and we'd put it in."

The Wild's video sessions had a similar feel at times, Spurgeon said.

"Definitely in the past few weeks there has been a bit more video on certain situations that you wouldn't regularly do in a regular season situation," he said. "Special situations, maybe a 6-on-5 or a 5-on-6 against."

But there's a line for how far the preparation could go during the regular season.

Spurgeon and Johnston both said they still had to focus on the day to day, that the next opponent was always the most important.

"It's sometimes hard to not look ahead and think about that series when playing some of these games that we were, but I think personally and as a team we've done a good job of staying in the moment, focusing on what's next and playing for each other," Johnston said. "Even in games that don't mean a ton for either team, it's just go out there, play your game, get your game in a good spot so you can hit the ground running at playoff time and not have to flip a switch."

Wild coach John Hynes said too much prep too early could have backfired.

"I think you have to catch yourself to not do that," Hynes said. "You don't want to obsess over certain things. But, yeah, this situation is a little bit different because we know we're going to play them and there's also time from when our last game is (Tuesday) to when we're going to play them. I think it's just trying to make sure you're focused on the right things and making sure you're also not too far ahead into the future."

And, Gulutzan said, there's always the risk of giving the players too much information.

That's the balance he said they're trying to strike now with Game 1 on Saturday.

"We're riding that teeter-totter right now," he said. "This was a little easier workwise to prep. Now it's the amount you want to give the players. You want to give them enough but not too much. You don't want to paralyze them when they're out there because they're thinking about every little play you put in. You can't do that. You want them to be as instinctual as possible."