Nothing came easily this season: Wild’s last gasp ends with playoff loss to Vegas

The Wild did so much right.

They prevented Vegas’ top players from running up the score, earned their own quality looks and embraced the skill-plus-will style they finally had a chance to rediscover now that everyone was healthy again to play it.

“We felt like we had what it took to go forward,” Ryan Hartman said.

That this wasn’t enough to defeat the Golden Knights, let alone force a Game 7, was a matching bow on a season that felt unfulfilled.

The Wild’s 3-2 loss Thursday night at Xcel Energy Center was an incompatible ending to a journey that started out so promising but a finality that was familiar, nonetheless.

“You feel like you deserve a little bit better, at least in the last few games here,” coach John Hynes said. “Unfortunately, it didn’t go that way.”

This was ninth consecutive postseason series the Wild have dropped, including a qualifying round series vs. Vancouver in the Edmonton COVID bubble in 2020. They haven’t advanced to the second round since 2015.

Vegas prevailed 4-2 in the best-of-seven on a Mark Stone deflection with 3 minutes, 58 seconds to go in the third period, an insurance goal that turned into the game-winner after Hartman netted his second of the night only 31 seconds later when he poked a puck in under goalie Adin Hill’s right pad.

Still, Hill, who backstopped the Golden Knights to the Stanley Cup two years ago, was sharpest when it mattered most, saving 29 shots in his team’s series-clinching victory.

“That’s a very good team over there,” Hill said. “They play a hard game. They play their system well. So, they made it challenging for us.”

Whoever scored first in Games 1-5 went on to win, and the Wild didn’t reverse that trend.

They were chasing early after Marco Rossi was penalized four minutes for high sticking Vegas’ Brayden McNabb and Shea Theodore connected on a wrist shot 3:30 into the first period on the ensuing power play.

“I felt fine,” said Gustavsson, who finished with 20 saves.

Hill faced more pressure the rest of the first, particularly from Foligno who had a pair of close calls in front before he decided to become the playmaker instead.

With four seconds left in the first, Foligno shielded the puck from the Golden Knights while cycling in the offensive zone before finding Hartman for a one-timer.

The goal was Hartman’s first of the playoffs but the second he’d knocked into the net since a deflection off his pants late in Game 5 was overturned for Gustav Nyquist being off-side, a video challenge by Vegas that denied the Wild of a 3-2 lead and set up the Golden Knights’ comeback.

Hartman’s six points finished third on the Wild, behind Kirill Kaprizov (nine) and Matt Boldy (seven).

Instead, a Jack Eichel breakaway broke that 1-1 tie with 3:48 left in the second period.

This was the Golden Knights’ best player’s first goal of the playoffs, but Eichel’s timing was impeccable and in-tune with Vegas doing just enough to outlast the Wild.

“It wasn’t too much of they had more, and we didn’t,” Foligno said. “A bounce here or there, it could have gone different.”

None of the Golden Knights’ victories were routs, two actually came in overtime, and many of Vegas’ strengths — from their high-profile first line to their physicality — were mirrored in the Wild.

“Should have won one of those OT games,” Gustavsson said. “It’s been every game that we’ve been losing has been very tight and small details.”

But where the Golden Knights did have an advantage was special teams, which was reflected in Game 6: Vegas went 1-for-4 on the power play, while the Wild were 0-for-2.

“They were situational things versus something that was exposed,” Hynes said, “and that’s what makes it hard.”

The Golden Knights are also experienced, and that was never clearer than in Game 6 as they methodically never trailed, weathered the Wild’s late push while Gustavsson was on the bench for an extra attacker and displayed a cohesiveness that the Wild had only recently began to reestablish.

“Our guys were right there,” Hynes said.

A nearly season-long string of injuries — including surgery for Kaprizov — didn’t just slow the Wild after a fast start had them atop the NHL into mid-December: The turnover interrupted the chemistry that had them clicking early, and they couldn’t put the pieces back together until only a few weeks ago when Kaprizov and Eriksson Ek were finally healed.

If the Wild had more time together, or less time apart, maybe this season would have been different instead of just feeling that way.