ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) No team in the ultra-competitive Western Conference has made the playoffs more times in a row than the Minnesota Wild, with six straight appearances to share the current streak lead with the Anaheim Ducks.
That regular season consistency has only led, however, to April dissatisfaction. Ousted in five games by Winnipeg in their first-round series, the Wild were sent again to an early exit from the Stanley Cup tournament. They were shut out by the Jets in the last two contests.
”It’s really disappointing. I don’t think that’s indicative of the kind of team that we have. It was just a really tough night,” center Matt Cullen said after the 5-0 loss in Winnipeg on Friday. ”Obviously with our backs against the wall, I think we all expected more and hoped for more, and I think if we could do it all over again every guy would like to give more.”
There was no shame in being beaten by the Jets, a deeper, faster team with an exceptional goalie that finished with the second-best record in the NHL in 2017-18. For the Wild, though, there’s an overarching theme of staying stuck at a good-but-not-great level since the franchise-altering signings of Zach Parise and Ryan Suter helped start this remarkable-but-unfulfilling run of making the playoffs every year with the two stars on the roster.
”We want more. We expect more from ourselves. We let another one slip away,” said right wing Charlie Coyle, who like fellow top-nine forwards Nino Niederreiter and Jason Zucker went without a goal or an assist over the five games against the Jets.
The Wild are 2-6 in series and 15-29 in games in the postseason during the Parise-Suter era that began on July 4, 2012. The 17-year-old franchise’s only advancement past the second round remains the 2003 surge to the Western Conference finals, where the Wild were swept by the Ducks.
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