The Minnesota Wild find themselves in a familiar postseason scenario

The Minnesota Wild aren’t done but they’re close — real close.

And the end might come a lot sooner than anybody could have imagined just a few weeks ago.

The Wild enter a must-win Game 6 on Thursday night  after a crushing  — yet maybe predictable — meltdown in the third period in Game 5.

With that, the Wild are on the verge of being eliminated in the first round of the playoffs once again, which has been the franchise’s trend throughout the last decade-plus. This one would feel different though. The best regular season in team history, a superstar in Kirill Kaprizov and a trade-deadline move for a three-time Stanley Cup winning goalie in Marc Fleury.

The Wild point to their resilient nature this season. And there’s a feeling the team could rally once again. Minnesota is also 13-11 in elimination games in the franchise history and beat Vegas twice in win-or-else situations in a first-round series last year — Games 5 and 6.

“Our belief is strong,” Wild coach Dean Evason said during a media availability session on Wednesday. “We know we’re a good hockey club. We know we’re still playing hockey. We have a chance to win Game 6 and that is our focus, period.

“We’re going in there competing,” Evason said. “We’ve been there before all season. We’ve been in this spot where we’ve lost a couple in a row … we let it go and we go forward. We’re going to do that again (Thursday) night.”

There’s little doubt the Wild have the ability to do it once again. The frustrating aspect is that the team finds itself in this position after taking a 2-1 series lead. Kaprizov scored both Wild goals in Game 5 and has seven for the series. The rest of the Wild’s offense has been almost non-existent at times in the series.

Will the Wild make any lineup changes for Thursday, including in net? Who knows? Minnesota just needs to find an answer somewhere and somehow. There is no more margin for error.

“We definitely have to find secondary scoring,” Evason said. “Balanced scoring like we have all year. We definitely need other people on our team chip in for sure. We talk to individuals and the group that it might not happen every night, but it might (Thursday). And we have to expect people not to step up individually, but step up as a group to score more goals.”

And for the Wild, it’s either step up or step out (of the playoffs).

The odds might be against the Wild, but would it be surprising if the series got extended to Game 7? No.

A loss and the Wild season comes to an early end in the postseason.

And unfortunately, that would no longer be surprising either.