Minnesota Wild: Team History in Elimination Games
By Turner Olson
With the Minnesota Wild facing playoff elimination in game 4, here is a look at how the team has fared in the past.
The Minnesota Wild have made the playoffs in eight of their 16 seasons in existence. Of the seven completed finishes, the team has lost in the first round four times, the second round twice, and made it to the conference finals. Since the team is facing elimination in their next game it made sense to look at how the team has performed in past situations.
Minnesota Wild
Since their inception, the Wild are 10-7 in elimination situations. That record may look good, but it is also deceiving. If you take away the magical 2003 playoff run their record falls to 4-6. The current core of players has managed to prolong their season three times to post an overall record of 3-4 in such situations.
Working against the team is the fact only four teams have ever come back from down 3-0 to win. They include the 1942 Maple Leafs, 1975 Islanders, 2010 Flyers, and most recently the 2014 Kings. On the positive side, two of those teams (Leafs and Kings) went on to win the Stanley Cup. The 2010 Flyers also lost in the Finals. So in the event the Wild manage to dig themselves out of this hole there is a good chance it will be followed by a lengthy playoff run.
Perhaps it might be too early to count them out. After all the Wild remain the only franchise to come back from down 3-1 to win two series in the same playoffs. But even in the likely event this team does lose in the first round for the third time in five years there is still value in the remaining games. If this group wants to be on the opposite end of these scores in the future, success in the remaining games of this series is important.