LAS VEGAS -- Facing their biggest game of the 2025 Stanley Cup Playoffs, the Minnesota Wild will be fully healthy when they try to take the series lead against the Vegas Golden Knights in Game 5 of the Western Conference First Round at T-Mobile Arena on Tuesday (9:30 p.m. ET; FDSNNO, SCRIPPS, ESPN, SNE, SN360, TVAS).
Forward Marcus Johansson will return after missing a 4-3 overtime loss Saturday with an undisclosed injury and center Joel Eriksson Ek will be in the lineup after missing practice Monday for maintenance.
The best-of-7 series is tied 2-2; teams that take a 3-2 lead in a best-of-7 series in the Stanley Cup playoffs win 79.2 percent of the time (357-94).
The Golden Knights are 6-1 in best-of-7 series when they've held a 3-2 lead; the Wild have only led 3-2 once in their history and won; Minnesota is 3-6 in series when they trail 3-2.
“It’s consistently trying to find a way where we can get better, competitive areas of the game that we can get better in," Wild coach John Hynes said Tuesday. "Last game, yes, we addressed those. There are certain things that we believe are keys to us being really good and are we doing them consistently enough, well enough.”
Now, it is time to show it on the ice.
“I think it is important we play to win and not to lose,” defenseman Jon Merrill said. “We have to go after them and stay aggressive. That’s been the difference in this series is our aggressiveness on the forechecks. So we’ll come out swinging tonight.”
Here is a breakdown of Game 5.
Wild: Merrill replaces rookie Zeev Buium on the blue line for Game 5. Buium is healthy but Minnesota wanted to go with more experience as the series grows shorter. Buium, who made his NHL debut in Game 1 of this series, had one assist, two shots on goal and was a minus-1 while averaging 13:36 of ice time per game. Now, the Wild turn to Merrill, who has played in 682 regular-season games and 37 playoff games. “I’m ready to get out there and help the team get a win tonight,” said the 33-year-old, who had six points (two goals, four assists) and a minus-8 rating in 70 games during the regular season.
Golden Knights: Vegas wants to exploit every opportunity it gets; there has been precious little space to generate through the middle of the neutral zone and gain speed or generate odd-man rushes. The Wild have clamped down there by lagging back. There’s space to the outside and the Golden Knights have to find ways to take it. “The challenge is how to create offense from that,” said Vegas coach Bruce Cassidy, who added he doesn’t want to see his team dump and chase just because they are being stood up at the blue line. The Golden Knights' bread and butter is zone entries and they need to use those to their advantage. “We can’t just give that up because a team backs off,” he said. “Let’s find different ways. It may not be scoring on the rush, but at get our entries and have possession so we don’t have to forecheck to get it back.”
Number to know: 63.6, the Wild penalty kill percentage in this series. Minnesota has not been effective against the power play, having allowing four goals in 11 attempts in this series. It gave up two goals on four attempts in Game 4, by defenseman Shea Theodore for the first goal of the game, and by center Nicolas Roy to tie it 2-2 at 4:50 of the third period.
What to look for: The way Vegas decides to match Minnesota's first line. With the last line change as the home team, Cassidy will have the opportunity to counter the unit of Eriksson Ek, Kirill Kaprizov and Matt Boldy. For much of the series, the Golden Knights have been content to go top line vs. top line, but the Wild have owned that matchup; Minnesota's top trio has combined for eight goals and a plus-9 rating in four games, but was held to two assists in Game 4.
