Wild clinches playoffs, focus shifts to fine-tuning for once it's there

The Wild entered the night on Saturday with a number of different scenarios available to it in order to clinch a spot in the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
The easiest one, of course, was win and get in. Minnesota made sure to leave nothing to chance.
With nine games remaining in the regular season, there won't be any grind, any magic number to pay attention to or any need for help from other clubs ... as the Wild took matters into its own hands by securing a 6-3 win over the San Jose Sharks at SAP Center.

The nine-game buffer is the earliest the Wild has ever clinched a playoff spot - by several games - made even more impressive by the fact that it comes in a shortened season.

"I think we knew we were playoff-bound with the way that we've been playing," said Wild defenseman Ryan Suter, who scored the game's opening goal on Saturday night just 19 seconds in. "Just looking at the standings, you see Vegas [clinch] the other night, then Colorado, so yeah, it was on our mind [going into the game]. But our focus was just ending the road trip solid and taking a couple days off to get ready for the next one."
Minnesota has now reached the playoffs in eight of the past nine seasons, one of the most consistent stretches during that span of time.
But unlike last season, when it snuck into the Edmonton bubble because of an expanded postseason field in the Western Conference, Minnesota now has plenty of time to try and get its game in order for a potential lengthy trip to the playoffs.
And as it has done all season long, Wild coach Dean Evason's sole focus will be on the next game.
In his first full season as the team's head coach, Evason said he hasn't allowed himself any time to think about what this night might be like. Of course, he has long-term goals, but he's been so focused on the game-by-game mantra, he sees no reason to deviate from that approach.
"It will continue to be taht way going forward is that we'll get ready for the next game, we'll play hard, we'll see where we sit and then we'll go again," Evason said. "That's been our mentality from game one and it won't change now.
"Your ultimate goal is, clearly, to win the Stanley Cup, that's what we're all here. But there's steps along the way. [Making the playoffs], it's a good step going forward."
The Wild also has the potential to hang at least one banner by winning the West Division championship, something it is within striking distance of because of yet another torrid stretch of hockey.

"There's not one of us that doesn't believe we can't be No. 1 in our division," said Wild forward Marcus Foligno, who made the game 2-0 on a goal 12 minutes into the first period. "Honestly, it's still within reach and we're playing against a team in Vegas that we can still catch.
"It's just something that has to be your mindset, every year, that you want to be the top dog and I think we're slowly getting into that talk amongst fans and other people in the media world that the Minnesota Wild now is a team that should be No. 1.
"There's some great teams in our division but we've had success against them and that should be the mindset going into those games."
The win in San Jose capped a perfect four-game road trip and extended the Wild's overall winning streak to seven games, its longest of the season. It has gained a point in eight consecutive games, also a season long.

And because of COVID-related schedule changes related to the Colorado Avalanche, the Wild will play each of its next seven games at Xcel Energy Center, where it has lost just once since the end of January.
Amazingly, the Wild has just nine games left in the season but has yet to play a quarter of its home schedule. That's what lies ahead over the next couple of weeks.

"We can't take our foot off the gas pedal, we can't relax," Foligno said. "We have to get ourselves ready and get emotionally involved. We can use these games as testers and get ourselves going and know what to expect come playoffs. That's the thing, I find bad things happen when you take the game a little bit lightly and we definitely don't want to be a team that does that.
"These next games leading into playoffs, we're gonna go 100 percent and make sure we're fine-tuning our game."
That stretch begins Wednesday night, when Minnesota plays the first of three-straight games against the St. Louis Blues. Like the Wild, division-leading Vegas has nine games remaining, but unlike Minnesota, the Knights have two games remaining against second-place Colorado.

Vegas leads Minnesota by five points for the top spot in the division. Colorado lies in between, one point ahead of the Wild, but with two games in hand.
Nobody has more home games left than the Wild, however, which is 17-4-0 in downtown St. Paul.
And while the Wild believes in its own dressing room that it has the club capable of continuing its hot stretch of play and challenging Vegas and Colorado for the division, the most important thing it wants to accomplish over its final nine games is getting its own game in order for the postseason.
"I think the other stuff kind of takes care of itself, if you're playing the right way and if you're trying to win games," Suter said. "Of course, you want to keep going and I don't see us taking games off. We've gotta continue, we've got some tough teams coming up and we've gotta continue to get better so that we are ready to go for Game 1."
Related:
Postgame Hat Trick: Wild 6, Sharks 3