What was the biggest factor for Wild’s series win?

There were months and months of build-up to a banger of a first-round series between the Minnesota Wild and Dallas Stars, who spent the entire season as two of the best teams in the NHL, but were locked out of first-place by a historically strong Colorado Avalanche team.

Many proclamations were thrown around guaranteeing that this series was destined to go seven games, but the Wild plunged the dagger into the Stars in Game 6 on Thursday night in St. Paul to set up their shot at dethroning the Avalanche.

Minnesota got phenomenal performances all series long from defenseman Quinn Hughes, winger Matt Boldy and rookie goaltender Jesper Wallstedt, but ultimately, the series victory that snapped a second-round appearance drought that extended all the way back to 2015 was a total team effort.

On Friday’s episode of Daily Faceoff LIVE, host Tyler Yaremchuk and co-host and former NHL goaltender Carter Hutton were joined by Seth Toupoal of Locked on Wild to break down the key elements that went into Minnesota’s ability to finally get over the hump in the first round against such a high-caliber opponent.

Tyler Yaremchuk: A big night in Minnesota. For the first time in 11 years, the Minnesota Wild have won a playoff series… so let’s start with the list of reasons why Minnesota was able to advance. If you had to write ’em all out, what’s the first one that comes to mind? What was the biggest key to them getting past the Dallas Stars?

Seth Toupoal: If I had to rank the biggest thing that I think swayed this series for Minnesota, I’ve got to go with Jesper Wallstedt. I mean, coming into his first playoff action, and outdueling Jake Oettinger over the course of a six-game series, there were major concerns once the season was done with what Filip Gustavsson had done… his last five or six starts were not great… But Jesper had a couple of games that he definitely was able to steal. To go toe-to-toe against Jake Oettinger and come out on top, that was an incredible way for the Wild to win this series. I would say the 5-on-5 play was probably number two. Staggering level of inability for Dallas to score in 5-on-5 play. They were held to almost exclusively special teams goals. I did not expect that they would have that much trouble, but for the Wild defense to keep them off the score sheet and basically turn them into a power play-reliant team, that was massive too.

You can watch the full segment and the rest of the episode below…