Playoff hockey is nearly upon us, and barring a last-minute flip in the standings, the Minnesota Wild will be on the road against the Dallas Stars in the first round. When that time comes, though, a few key players might not be ready to suit up and hit the ice.
Thankfully the injuries are on the Dallas side of the ice, although rooting for those sorts of things are super corny. It's undeniable, though, that injuries ultimately do play a role in impacting games this time of year, which is something Wild fans are no strangers to.
Lest we forget how impactful not having Joel Eriksson Ek was last season, or the infamous cross-check Ryan Suter put on Kirill Kaprizov that altered the trajectory of that first series.
This time around, it's two key Stars players who we will all be keeping an eye on as the looming first-round series nears. One of those guys is Miro Heiskanen, who left Thursday's game against the Wild with a lower-body injury and underwent an MRI on Friday that left Dallas' head coach less than optimistic.
“He did have an MRI this afternoon,” Glen Gulutzan said. “We won’t have him for the rest of the regular season, but we’re certainly hoping to get him in the first round.”
Speculation is that he'll still be available for Game 1 since he'll have a week to recover, but not having him at 100 percent is an advantage to the Wild.
The other Stars player whose presence -- or lack thereof -- could impact the series is Roope Hintz. He's been out since
Dallas Morning News reporter Lia Assimakopoulos gave an update that didn't exactly sound positive, noting that Hintz missed the initial return window the Stars were hoping for and will miss the remainder of the regular season.
Missing the rest of the season at this point isn't that big of a deal, but it's notable in that neither Heiskanen nor Hintz will get any tune-up time before the playoffs arrive. The bad news for the Wild is how deep the Stars with talent that could dagger them at any given point in the upcoming series. We all got a heavy and unfortunate dose of that on Thursday when Minnesota allowed a 3-1 lead to be erased and flipped into a 5-4 loss thanks to the firepower of Jason Robertson, Wyatt Johnston, and Mikko Rantanen.
At the very least we saw a preview of what the series could look like on Thursday and the Wild showed some fight. There are some bug questions that need to be answered in the meantime, like getting Filip Gustavsson some confidence in net, but Minnesota matched Dallas' physicality and proved that they won't go as quietly this year as we've seen in the past.