The Dallas Stars and Minnesota Wild will meet in the West first round this weekend, with a playoff field that was only fully sorted in the final days of the regular season. Dallas finished 50-20-12 with 112 points. Minnesota finished 46-24-12 with 104 points.
For Dallas, the stars game arrives with a strong top end and a thin margin for error. Jake Oettinger remains a major edge in net, especially in the third period, while Mikko Rantanen brings a track record of postseason production. Jason Robertson scored more than 40 goals and Wyatt Johnson also scored more than 40, giving the Stars scoring depth that can tilt a series if the lineup holds together.
The biggest question for Dallas is health. Injured center Roope Hintz will not be available for at least the first two games, and the return timing for defenseman Miro Heiskanen remains uncertain. That matters against a Minnesota team that can press when it gets its top line moving and has enough blue-line talent to force mistakes. The final two Western Conference matchups will be settled Thursday night, and three playoff matchups remained to be determined before the postseason begins this weekend.
Minnesota brings a different kind of pressure into the series. The Wild are 0-9 in their past nine playoff series and have not advanced past the first round since 2015, a run of frustration that hangs over every spring now. They added Quinn Hughes in a December trade, and he is paired with Brock Faber on the blue line, giving them a defensive look that is more stable than the numbers around their season-long goaltending. Kirill Kaprizov and Matt Boldy remain their top wingers, but Minnesota’s goaltending has been inconsistent since the Olympic break in February.
The teams have already shown they can bring heat. On Thursday, April 9, 2026, a game between the Stars and Wild in Arlington, Texas, featured fights in the third period. That was the regular season. Now the stakes are different, and Dallas enters with better results, more scoring punch and the kind of goaltending that can win a tight series if the injuries do not deepen. Minnesota has the recent history, but not the playoff success to match it.
Colorado, as the Presidents’ Trophy winner, will face Los Angeles, Anaheim or Edmonton once the West bracket is complete, and the other two teams in that set will play each other. For Dallas and Minnesota, the bracket is no longer the issue. The test is whether the Stars can survive the opening games without Hintz, and whether the Wild can finally turn a familiar spring script into something else.