Postgame: Wild Season Ends in Game 6

ST. PAUL, Minn. -A series that began with such promise with a thrilling double-overtime victory in Game 1 in Dallas ended on a sour note at home in Game 6 as the Minnesota Wild fell 4-1 in the must-win contest.
This playoff defeat, the seventh straight time the team has failed to get out of the first round of the playoffs (or qualifying round in 2020), will be remembered for the opportunities that got away from the Wild both in-game chances and bigger picture chances to push the Stars to the brink.
After holding series leads of 1-0 and 2-1 the Wild offense dried up and they managed to score just three goals in the final three games of the series, all losses.
Inside the Wild locker room was a somber scene.

Players spoke in hushed tones to the reporters chronicling the disappointing loss.
"It's tough to say right now. It's so fresh in your mind. It's so frustrating," said captain Jared Spurgeon. "We had spots in the series where we could have won games and put them away and we didn't do that. That's something we've got to focus on next year and years out. That when we get those opportunities we do finish them. It's just frustrating every year when it ends like this."
Ryan Hartman was one of the first to speak, engulfed by cameras and reporters.
"Sick to my stomach about it," Hartman said. "This city deserves better than what we gave them. The fans, they've shown up for us all year and we, we failed them. And it feels like (crap). There's opportunities throughout this series where we could have not necessarily put the nail in the coffin, but we could have separated ourselves a little bit more and we failed to capitalize on opportunities throughout the series."
Mats Zuccarello kept running his hands through his hair as though he had trouble accepting the outcome.
"It stings every year. Yeah. For sure. I don't know what to say," the veteran forward said.
He was asked about what the team needed to do to get over the hump and provided an answer and then paused.
"It's hard for me to talk about right now," Zuccarello said. "I don't know, we just the lost the game so it's hard for me to know all that. But I think we have a lot of good up-and-coming players and like I said a lot of changes made but I mean we can talk about that for another time. Now we're just going take some time to get over this loss and use the summer well and be prepared."
In Game 6 the moments that might have told a different story in this game and the series were there but could not be seized. In the first period, after a strong start from the Wild, Ryan Hartman couldn't get a bouncing puck to go with the Dallas net open in front of him.
The Stars then jumped down the ice and Roope Hintz beat John Klingberg to the outside and then ripped a high shot past Filip Gustavsson on the Stars' first shot of the game.
"Yeah, I put the puck from my backhand to my forehand and I mean, I've watched it 100 times in slow motion between periods, and a rolling puck as soon as I go to push it into the net it bounces over my blade and their defenseman whacks it off their goalie's foot and then it goes and hits the post," Hartman said. "And they (effing) score right after. So I mean obviously that one's tough. Those are the opportunities that I've been talking about where you have an opportunity to go up 1-0. Obviously it's a bad bounce. There's really nothing more I could have done besides obviously put it in, but it's a rolling puck that just bounces and it doesn't make contact with it."
Late in the second period, with the Wild having killed the first Dallas power play of the night, they attacked with numbers and Zuccarello sailed a shot high of the net and the Stars once again turned the miss into a critical goal with Mason Marchment beating Gustavsson with 0.5 seconds left in the second period to give Dallas a 3-0 lead.
The special teams had been such a focal point in the series and it was again on Friday but in a different manner. The Wild were disciplined and Dallas, who led all NHL teams heading into action Friday with nine power play goals, had only two power play chances and the Wild killed both of those.
But the Wild, trailing in the first, had two power play opportunities of their own in the last seven minutes of the first period. Neither generated much in the way of chances and they finished 4-for-22 in the series with the man advantage.
"It's tough. It's a brutal feeling," said Marcus Foligno who so wanted to redeem himself for an up-and-down series including getting ejected early in Game 5. "We grind all the way to get to the playoffs and we can't get out of the first round again. Broken record. We try to take as many positives as we can out of this whole year and go into this summer and get better."
Strangely enough, on a night when the Wild shut down the Dallas power play for the first time in the series, it was the Stars who had success at even strength scoring three times 5-on-5 and one into an empty net.
It was that kind of night and really that kind of series for the Minnesota Wild who were playing with a number of players banged up including Zuccarello, who did not skate Thursday or Friday morning, but gamed it out in Game 6.
John Klingberg was injured in the second period and missed some time during Game 6 as a result.
Matt Dumba didn't play in the third period and Evason said he suffered an upper body injury.
He is coming to the end of his current contract and it's possible he could be moving on as a free agent.
"I feel terrible for him. The guy's a warrior. Absolute battler," Foligno said. "He loves this team, loves the guys on the team, and loves this city. It's tough. We'll see what happens. When you talk about a great teammate there's Matt Dumba in that definition. It's tough to see him not there going out like this. But we hope that he's fine."
That's to say nothing of the loss of number one center Joel Eriksson Ek who played just 19 seconds in the series.
"You could talk about a lot of those things and obviously Ek is a huge part of our team. I don't need to speak to that. Everybody knows the importance that he is, but everybody has injuries," Evason said. "We had to find a way to get through without him and without other people and we didn't."
Part of the difficulty for the players and coaches is that they felt that lessons had been learned from their opening round series loss a year ago to St. Louis. And yet when it came time to put those lessons into practice they struggled in key areas including special teams.
This series was also a hard lesson for young stars Kirill Kaprizov and Matt Boldy.
Kaprizov had perhaps his best game of the series in Game 6 but he finished with just one goal in the series and none in the last five games. At one point early in the third period he seemed to have an open net but sent the puck through the crease. It seemed to sum up his series.
Boldy, so important to the Wild when Kaprizov was hurt during the regular season, didn't score in the series and finished with three assists.
"I'm proud of the way that the guys have competed all year. I love the group. I loved our team mentality," Evason said. "The way that we stuck up for each other all year. How hard we competed. We didn't have our, the best goal scoring, so we figured out a way to grind out hockey games. It's hard right now. This is a very difficult league. It's tough to make the playoffs. Obviously, this is not what we want. We have to make that step. We didn't make that first step this year. By getting through the first round. We've got a lot of work to do. But we played our asses off. The guys, like I said, stuck together. I'm proud of our team and what our team stood for."
Whether it was done out of respect or an effort to jump-start the Wild, it was Marc-Andre Fleury who entered the game at the start of the third period after Gustavsson had allowed three goals on 26 shots.
The future Hall of Famer is 38 and in a conversation on the eve of the playoffs he was candid about being near the end of his career. He has one more year left on his current deal and said he expects to be back next season.
For the record Fleury was solid, especially in denying the Stars on the power play midway through the third stopping all six shots he faced.
"It is too bad, you know. We have a good bunch of guys, great chemistry and a good team. We had good depth. I really believed we were going to go deeper here in the playoffs," Fleury said. "It's a little bit stunning."