2025 Stanley Cup Playoffs: Golden Knights vs. Wild Western 1st round preview

The first round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs features 16 teams in eight best-of-7 series, which start Saturday. Today, NHL.com previews the Western Conference First Round between the Vegas Golden Knights and Minnesota Wild.

(1P) Vegas Golden Knights vs. (1WC) Minnesota Wild

Golden Knights: 50-22-10, 110 points
Wild: 45-30-7, 97 points
Season series: VGK: 3-0-0; MIN: 0-3-0
Game 1: Sunday at Vegas (10 p.m. ET; ESPN, SN, SN360, TVAS, FDSNNO, SCRIPPS)

The Vegas Golden Knights are looking to win the Stanley Cup for the second time in three seasons and will start that quest against the Minnesota Wild in the Western Conference First Round.

The previous two times the Golden Knights won at least 50 games in a season, they reached the Stanley Cup Final, losing in 2018 and winning the Cup in 2023.

The Wild, who were the first wild card in the West, have not won a playoff series since 2015 and haven't been past the second round since losing in the conference final in 2003. They missed the postseason last year.

In their only postseason meeting against the Golden Knights, the Wild lost in seven games in the first round in 2021.

"It's going to be an exciting series," Vegas forward Keegan Kolesar said. "They are a heavy team. We played them in [the playoffs] in the past and it went to seven games. We know they are going to fight tooth and nail. They hit a bit of a rough patch at the end of the season, but they clawed their way back in."

Despite the results during the regular season and the previous playoff meeting, the Wild are not lacking confidence.

"Hey, they're a great team," Wild forward Marcus Foligno said. "They've been consistent all year. We're coming in and it's just got to be a team that has no doubt really. We're playing against a really good Vegas team and we have nothing to lose. We just leave it all out there at the end of the day. We got to throw our best hockey in a seven-game series and just be ready for it, be emotionally involved in these games and smart and learn from past experiences.

"Some of us remember the series against Vegas, too, right? It was the same kind of matchup where they were highly touted, and we came in and pushed them to Game 7. Would have loved to have had a [different outcome] in that series but it is what it is. We just got to know that everyone needs to be on board and that energy needs to be there going against Vegas."

Center Jack Eichel led the Golden Knights with an NHL career-high 94 points (28 goals, 66 assists) in 77 games. Forward Mark Stone had 67 points (19 assists, 48 points) in 66 games, and center Tomas Hertl had 61 points (32 goals, 29 assists) in 73 games.

"Regardless of who we play, we have to focus on what we do and bring that to the table," Vegas forward Brandon Saad said. "They have a lot of depth, some skill and some superstar power."

Forward Matt Boldy led the Wild with 73 points (27 goals, 46 assists) in 82 games. Center Marco Rossi had 60 points (24 goals, 36 assists) in 82 games and forward Kirill Kaprizov had 56 points (25 goals, 31 assists) in 41 games, but missed 40 games because of a lower-body injury that required surgery. He returned April 9 and had four points (two goals, two assists) in four games to end the regular season.

Although Filip Gustavsson will be the No. 1 goalie for Minnesota in the series, some of the spotlight will be on backup Marc-Andre Fleury, who led the Golden Knights to the Cup Final in 2018.

Game breakers

Golden Knights: Eichel is playing at a level unseen in the first eight seasons of his NHL career. He scored 12 more points than any previous season and had a career-best plus-32 rating. Eichel has been so good and so consistent that he is being mentioned in conversations for the Hart Trophy as League MVP for the regular season and for the Selke Trophy as the League's best defensive forward. He is lethal on the power play with 34 points, and can kill penalties, while playing 20:32 per game.

Wild: Boldy keeps getting better and reached a new plateau this season. He led Minnesota in goals (27), assists (46), points (73), power-play points (27), game-winning goals (10) and shots on goal (271). The 24-year-old is strong on his skates and supremely talented, and can compete against the best the NHL has to offer. This season, he played for the United States at the 4 Nations Face-Off and had three points (one goal, two assists) in four games.

Goaltending

Golden Knights: Adin Hill has been a workhorse for the Golden Knights, playing in an NHL career-high 50 games and a career-best 2,940:13 this season. His 32 wins were second in Vegas history to the 35 Fleury won in 2018-19. Only four goalies have more wins than Hill this season. The 28-year-old won his final three games of the regular season, allowing six goals on 63 shots. Ilya Samsonov was 16-9-4 with a 2.82 goals-against average and .891 save percentage in 29 games.

Wild: Gustavsson will be the starter and he too is coming off a career season. He started a career-high 58 games, 13 more than last season. He had 31 victories after never topping more than 22 in his first four seasons. His five shutouts are tied for third in the League this season. Fleury played four seasons with Vegas, from their inaugural season in 2017-18 until 2020-21, and was their goalie during their surprising trip to the Stanley Cup Final in 2018. The 40-year-old, who will retire at the end of the season, was 14-9-1 with a 2.93 GAA and .899 save percentage in 26 games (22 starts) this season.

Numbers to know

Golden Knights: Forward Pavel Dorofeyev had a Vegas-leading 35 goals, three more than second-place Hertl. Dorofeyev, 24, had 20 goals in his first 65 NHL games across parts of three seasons. He scored 13 power-play goals, one fewer than Hertl. Not surprisingly, his 253 shots on goal also were the most on the team and he had a Vegas-best seven game-winning goals.

Wild: Minnesota held a lead going into the third period 29 times this season. They won all 29 games, the only team in the League to not lose after leading after two periods. Amazingly, they did it despite being outscored 94-88 in the third period. Of the nine teams that have allowed more than 94 goals in the third period, Minnesota was the only one to qualify for the Stanley Cup Playoffs.

They said it

"I've just had this gut watching Vegas play that they just look like a playoff team. They look like a team that is big enough and skilled enough. I think Jack Eichel is playing as well as I've ever seen him play. Vegas is in a pretty good spot I think given the way that Edmonton and [Los Angeles] are going to go at it again. I think they're just going to be sitting there. They're going to have a hard first-round series, but I really like Vegas. We expect this level of success from them now already and I think we've under-covered how good they are." -- TNT broadcaster Eddie Olczyk

"With this particular team, I just really, really enjoy coaching them. There's a lot of heart, there's a lot of character, there's a lot of characters. It's fun to come to the rink every day and have the opportunity to coach them and I just appreciate the way that they work and their ability to be coached. Now we've got to continue to push forward. Now we go to the second season, which is going to elevate, so I'm proud of the team and really, really appreciate the way that they work. And now we get the next agenda, is to get ourselves to another level in the second season here." -- Wild coach John Hynes

Will win if …

Golden Knights: They find the ability to draw penalties and stay hot on the power play. Vegas is second in the NHL on the power play, having converted on 28.3 percent of its chances (53 of 187), but has drawn fewer penalties than any team in the League (219). Minnesota is third-to-last on the penalty kill at 72.4 percent. The Wild were short-handed 203 times during the regular season, the eighth-fewest in the League.

Wild: Kaprizov is healthy. This is a completely different team when their star forward is in the lineup. Minnesota went 21-10-4 before the 27-year-old sustained a lower-body injury. They were 21-19-3 during his absence, before going 3-1-0 since his return.

How they look

Golden Knights projected lineup

Ivan Barbashev -- Jack Eichel -- Mark Stone

Brandon Saad -- Tomas Hertl -- Pavel Dorofeyev

Brett Howden -- William Karlsson -- Reilly Smith

Tanner Pearson -- Nicolas Roy -- Keegan Kolesar

Nicolas Hague -- Alex Pietrangelo

Brayden McNabb -- Shea Theodore

Noah Hanifin -- Zach Whitecloud

Adin Hill

Ilya Samsonov

Scratched: Ben Hutton, Kaedan Korczak, Victor Olofsson, Cole Schwindt

Injured: None

Wild projected lineup

Kirill Kaprizov -- Joel Eriksson Ek -- Matt Boldy

Marcus Johansson -- Frederick Gaudreau -- Mats Zuccarello

Marcus Foligno -- Marco Rossi -- Gustav Nyquist

Yakov Trenin -- Ryan Hartman -- Justin Brazeau

Jacob Middleton -- Brock Faber

Jonas Brodin -- Jared Spurgeon

Jon Merrill -- Zach Bogosian

Filip Gustavsson

Marc-Andre Fleury

Scratched: Vincent Hinostroza, Declan Chisholm, Zeev Buium

Injured: None