The big question entering the Minnesota Wild’s playoff series was simple: What’s different this time?
The Wild have had a similar core during the Kirill Kaprizov Era, and they fell short in each trip to the playoffs, blowing a series lead each time. Minnesota is back in a familiar spot: up 2-1 in a series, with a chance to take a commanding lead in Game 4. Wild fans will be forgiven for waiting for the moment Lucy pulls away the football.
But after Game 3, we have our answer to the big question. What’s different? It’s Matt Boldy. He’s different this year, and his powers are growing by the game.
Offensively, Boldy’s stat sheet duplicated his first two games. With a goal and assist, he put up his third-straight multi-point effort. That’s quickly becoming routine. So is the impact of his goals. This time, Boldy scored unassisted on a terrific effort, picking Noah Hanifin’s pocket in the offensive zone to give Minnesota much-needed breathing room in the second period.
But somehow, offense isn’t the story of Boldy’s Game 3. Save for a weak 4-on-4 goal and a shorthanded effort by William Karlsson and Reilly Smith, nothing was getting by him tonight. After a tough two-way regular season, the Wild’s “second star” is back to looking like the dominant two-way force he’s been throughout his career.
His 5-on-5 stats were staggering: 11 shots on goal for, zero against.
These weren’t soft minutes, either. John Hynes kept going best-on-best, putting Boldy out against Jack Eichel and Mark Stone for over eight of his 12 5-on-5 minutes (per Natural Stat Trick). Boldy — with help from Kirill Kaprizov and Joel Eriksson Ek, of course — just steamrolled them.
That alone would be impressive, but then we get to the penalty kill. Hynes has shown reluctance to let Boldy run on the PK, even as the unit sat in the league’s bottom three. Boldy registered barely over 30 shorthanded minutes in the regular season. On Thursday night, he had 5 minutes and 16 seconds killing penalties, or about 17% of his regular-season total.
Why not? Boldy showed in the first two games of the series that nothing Minnesota gave him — the responsibility of shutting down Eichel and Stone, the massive amount of minutes — was too much for him. With Boldy on this kind of tear, giving him shorthanded minutes seemed obvious. It’s just another opportunity to let one of your two best players make an impact.
As the Wild marched to the penalty box three times in the final 20 minutes, Hynes leaned on Boldy for nearly four shorthanded minutes in the third period alone. Alongside Eriksson Ek, his forward tandem’s only job was to shut down the heart of a Vegas power play with the second-highest conversion rate in the regular season. In five games against Minnesota this year, Vegas scored on six of their nine times on the man advantage. An unstoppable force meeting the most movable object in the world.
But not against Boldy. Not tonight. Vegas made Filip Gustavsson swallow some pucks, particularly when the Knights pulled their goalie to turn a 5-on-4 into a 6-on-4, but didn’t threaten much until they yanked Adin Hill out of the game. Even then, Boldy and Eriksson Ek teamed up to break up a centering pass to the middle of the slot, clear the puck, and kill off precious clock. Boldy also saw a would-be hat trick bounce off the post in an empty-net attempt.
Credit to Hynes for riding the hot hand and finding ways to expand his star’s game mid-series. By playing this version of Boldy on the penalty kill, Hynes took his team’s Achilles’ Heel and turned it into his team’s Achilles’ Everything Else, at least for one 0-for-4 night for Vegas’ power play. If this is the norm for the rest of the series, that’s another difference between the 2025 Wild and the previous versions.
Still, not as big as the Wild’s best players all stepping up in the playoffs. It’s only three games and a 2-1 series lead. Minnesota has to finish the job. But with Boldy, Kaprizov, Eriksson Ek, Gustavsson, and more firing on all cylinders right now, Wild fans have more reason to believe they can get the job done than at any other time in this past decade.