Wild vs. Stars Game 5: Minnesota dominates again at 5-on-5, puts Dallas on the brink

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Now, after 11 years of playoff torture — being good enough to almost always get in but not good enough or fortunate enough to get through a single round — the Wild are one win away from advancing to the Western Conference semifinals. With another dominant performance at five-on-five, the Wild put the powerhouse Dallas Stars on the brink of elimination, winning 4-2 in Game 5 at American Airlines Center to take a 3-2 series lead. The Stars went another game without a five-on-five goal. They have now been outscored 14-4 at even strength in the series and 11-3 at five-on-five, with no five-on-five goals in the past 207 minutes, 53 seconds. Mats Zuccarello scored early in his return to the Wild after missing three games with a head injury, Matt Boldy tallied a power-play goal in the second, Michael McCarron had a third-period goal that stood up as the game-winner and Kirill Kaprizov capped it with an empty-netter. Kaprizov also assisted on two goals. Jesper Wallstedt, who entered the game with a .929 save percentage, 3.57 goals saved above expected, a .970 five-on-five save percentage and .929 five-on-five high-danger save percentage, made 20 saves. Dallas, meanwhile, finds itself on the brink of a first-round loss that, while somewhat excusable based on the NHL’s unforgiving divisional playoff format, would be a crushing disappointment for a team built to win and win right now. The Stars reached the Western Conference final each of the last three springs, and have harbored legitimate hopes of finally breaking through to the Stanley Cup Final this season. With two 45-goal scorers in Jason Robertson and Wyatt Johnston, a superstar in Mikko Rantanen, a perennial Norris candidate in Miro Heiskanen and a high-end goaltender in Jake Oettinger, Dallas’ window is now. But their stunning inability to produce at five-on-five against the Wild and an absolute dearth of depth scoring — every Dallas goal this series has been scored by their top-five skaters — has the Stars one loss from their first early spring since 2023. Heiskanen and Robertson scored for the Stars on Tuesday. Robertson has scored in every game in the series. The Wild entered the game 1-6 all-time in Game 5’s when the series was tied 2-2. The only previous victory? Game 5 in 2015 in St. Louis — the last time the Wild won a playoff series. When a best-of-seven playoff round is tied 2-2, the winner of Game 5 has gone on to win the series 79.4 percent of the time (239-62). That includes a 150-36 (.807) record for the home team and an 89-26 (.774) record for the road team. The Wild will have a chance to avoid a Game 7 and close out this series in six games Thursday night in St. Paul, with the Presidents’ Trophy-winning Colorado Avalanche awaiting. The Wild thought they took a 2-1 lead late in the first period before another Boldy goal was taken off the board. With 13 seconds left in the first, Minnesota was creating on the power play. Boldy got the puck low and went to the net, taking three shots at Oettinger during a goal-mouth scramble. Boldy was tripped by Esa Lindell, and Heiskanen actually knocked the puck in, but Boldy’s stick pushed Oettinger’s right pad, which sparked a goalie interference challenge by the Stars. The challenge worked, and Boldy’s goal was overturned, making it the third time in the past two games that a Minnesota goal was taken off the board. Boldy also had one waved off quickly in Game 4 when he made a distinct kicking motion on a goal before later scoring the overtime winner. He knew that one in Game 4 was coming off, but this one was a closer call. Boldy would get the power-play goal back in the final minute of the second after Dallas was whistled for too many men. After winning three puck battles, he scored his fourth goal of the series to snap a streak of 12 straight kills for the Stars. It was the Wild’s top power-play unit’s first goal in 18 tries in the past four games. The Wild couldn’t have asked for a better start with Zuccarello returning to the lineup and scoring just 3:51 in. They gave up one shot in the first eight minutes and put on a defensive clinic. That was until Bobby Brink’s offensive blue-line turnover that led to a … Brink penalty covering for it — not a good combo for a guy who stayed in the lineup with the returns of Zuccarello and Yakov Trenin. Being unwilling to pull Brink from the lineup led to rookie Danila Yurov and/or veteran Nico Sturm getting the night off. The third line with Vladimir Tarasenko, McCarron and Brink was hemmed in so often in the first period and start of the second that coach John Hynes finally demoted Brink to the fourth line and elevated Trenin, back in the lineup for the first time since getting hurt in Game 2, early in the second. One reason the Brink penalty stung is that the Wild have struggled so much on the penalty kill. For the ninth time in the series and fourth in a row, the Stars scored on the power play, with Heiskanen whistling his second in two games. After that penalty kill, the Wild had lost a league-high 25 faceoffs on 42 draws (40.4 percent). Joel Eriksson Ek, who was charged with the loss on this one, had lost 11 of 17 draws to that point, McCarron 10 of 19 and Nick Foligno 4 of 6. However, the kill came through with two big ones – one in the second and one in the third. Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms