Heika’s Take: Stars endure painfully familiar Game 1 loss at hands of Wild

Well, that was painfully familiar.

The Stars lost the first game of a playoff series…at home…again.

The Stars were crushed by Minnesota on Saturday at American Airlines Center in a 6-1 final, losing the home ice advantage it had worked so hard to gain down the stretch in the regular season. The best-of-seven series is 1-0 Minnesota with two of the next three games in St. Paul - throwing all manner of doubt into a fan base that has been here before.

Dallas lost Game 1 to Colorado last season, 5-1. It lost to the Avalanche in the Second Round the year before as well. Heck, it was down 0-2 to the Golden Knights in 2024 and dropped two of the first three games against the Wild in 2023.

In each case, the Lads in Victory Green rallied to win the series. That’s the only real encouraging thought right now, because the game itself was pretty disappointing.

Minnesota came in and won most of the puck battles, which has been a calling card for Dallas this year. It went 2-for-4 on the power play, won the battle of hits (49-38), and had just eight giveaways to the Stars’ 14.

In a lot of ways, the Wild out-Starred the Stars.

“It certainly didn’t look like a playoff game from our point of view,” Stars coach Glen Gulutzan said when asked about the team’s level of intensity. “I thought that they, to a man, were better than us, which hasn’t happened to us a lot during the year. You can’t get your game going if you’re not going to win battles. You can take any metric, and if you lose skating battles and puck battles you are always on the receiving end of everything negative.”

Dallas was able to keep the score close in the first after Minnesota scored on the power play. But then Kirill Kaprizov put a bullet into the upper corner a minute into the second, followed by a puck that deflected in off of Ryan Hartman and a Matt Boldy push-in at the side of the net, and it was quickly 4-0 six minutes into the second period.

Jake Oettinger was not at his best, but it was clear this was a team problem and not just a goaltending issue.

“Nothing for me was on our goaltending,” Gulutzan said. “Certainly, our specialty teams need to be better and our 5-on-5 play wasn’t good enough.”

Dallas pushed back and received a power play goal from Jason Robertson to make it 4-1. But the Wild scored on the power play in the third and added an empty-netter to send a message that this rivalry series is going to be tough.

“I think it’s just being hard to play against,” said Wild coach John Hynes. “Whether it’s physicality, skating, checking or those things, it’s been a big part of the game and our identity.”

The Stars said they have a lot to fix before Game 2 on Monday at AAC.

“We didn’t deserve to win,” forward Mikko Rantanen said. “I think the first 30 minutes we didn’t win enough battles. They were just a little bit stronger in the battles, that’s how they were able to make us defend more than we wanted to, that’s somewhere we can be a little bit stronger.”

The Stars were one of the best defensive teams in the league during the regular season, so the belief is they will be closer to that in Game 2. Miro Heiskanen returned after missing three games with injury, and he logged 23:55.

“I felt pretty good,” Heiskanen said. “My legs felt good. It was a tough one, obviously, but my body felt good.”

Gulutzan chose to play Adam Erne and Colin Blackwell and scratched Michael Bunting and Arttu Hyry. Those are changes that could be considered before Game 2. At the same time, the team could just re-rack and “play better.” They have done that in many playoff series in the past, and it is a possibility.

“I don’t think we played our best game, but we’ve played a lot of playoff series and lost a lot of Game 1’s, so I feel like we know what we need to do next game,” Oettinger said. “We all have to be better. There is no excuse for it. The energy was great in the building. There is just no excuse for it.”

That said, they do know how to come back.

“I think this team has a lot of experience being down [after] Game 1,” said Rantanen. “We lost last year, and I think we’ve lost a lot of Game 1’s. I’m not too worried. This team is really good at resetting and coming back the next night, but we’ve got to learn and be a lot better."

This story was not subject to the approval of the National Hockey League or Dallas Stars Hockey Club.

Mike Heika is a Senior Staff Writer for DallasStars.com and has covered the Stars since 1994. Follow him on X @MikeHeika.