Wild vs. Blues 2015 First Round

Lore & Background

The 2014-15 regular season had given the Wild a respectable 100-point campaign, but the playoff draw did not flatter them. The wild-card format pitted the eighth seed directly against the seventh, and on paper the Blues—with their depth, their physicality, and a roster built around a core that had been growing for years—looked like the team that would advance. Minnesota's front office had spent the offseason adding depth, and the regular-season offense, powered by Matt Cullen, Charlie Coyle, and a young Mikael Granlund, had been electric. But playoffs are won in the net, and the Wild's starting goaltender was not the one who would carry them.

Devan Dubnyak, a journeyman backup who had spent years as a reliable No. 2, stepped into the crease when the series demanded it and became the gravitational center of the Wild's identity. His saves in the later games, the way he seemed to grow taller with every rebound, turned Xcel Energy Center into a pressure cooker that the Blues could not escape. Mikko Koivu, the long-serving captain, anchored the defense and the locker room with the quiet authority of a man who had carried this franchise through its leanest years. The crowd's roar after each critical save became a kind of communal exhalation, as if the entire metro area was holding its breath between periods.

The series ended in St. Louis, on the Blues' home ice, and the final whistle sent the Twin Cities into a celebration that felt almost disbelieving. For a team that had been written off so many times, the 2015 first-round win was proof that the Wild belonged in the playoff conversation. It also deepened the Central Division rivalry: the Blues, a city just an hour and a half south, had been outplayed by a team many considered a step below them, and that stung in a way that lingers in every subsequent Wild-Blues matchup since.

In Their Own Story

The arena lights hummed their low, electric buzz. Game seven. St. Louis. The Enterprise Center was a sea of blue, and the noise hit you like a wall of cold air the moment you stepped off the plane. You could feel the ice under the skates before you even walked onto the rink—that particular, almost sacred chill that tells you this is the real thing, not a practice, not a warm-up. The puck sat in the center faceoff circle, a small black disc that suddenly weighed more than anything in the world. Dubnyak dropped his glove, tapped his skates, and the crowd noise swelled into a single, sustained roar. Koivu lined up across from him, jaw set, eyes locked forward. The referee raised his stick. The drop. The hit. And then the whole building held its breath, because everyone in that arena, in that city, in that state, knew exactly what was at stake. One shift. One save. One more game. The ice cracked under ten thousand blades, and the night belonged to whoever refused to blink first.

Reader's Guide

The hook is simple geography: two cities, two states, one shared river basin. St. Paul and St. Louis sit a little over an hour apart by car, and the Central Division has turned that proximity into a rivalry that feels almost familial in its intensity. Every Wild-Blues game carries the weight of a neighborly argument that never quite resolves.

In the 2015 first round, the Wild, the eighth seed, faced the seventh-seeded Blues in a wild-card matchup that was supposed to be a formality for St. Louis. It was not. The series stretched to seven games, and the Wild won 4-3, with backup goaltender Devan Dubnyak delivering the kind of performances that turn a regular-season also-ran into a playoff contender overnight. Mikko Koivu, the steady, unflashy captain, held the defensive core together while the offense of Cullen, Coyle, and Granlund found its rhythm.

What the Twin Cities say about St. Louis is a mix of respect and stubborn defiance: 'They think they're the better team because they're the bigger market.' What St. Louis says back is just as predictable: 'They got lucky with a backup goalie.' Both fanbases are right, and both are wrong, and that's what keeps the rivalry alive every time the Central Division schedule rolls around. The heat in a sold-out Xcel Energy Center on a playoff night is a specific, almost physical thing—thousands of voices, the slap of sticks on ice, the smell of cold air and hot coffee, and the unshakeable belief that this one game, this one night, is the one that matters.

Did You Know?

• Devan Dubnyak entered the 2015 playoffs as a backup goaltender and became the emotional and statistical center of the Wild's seven-game series win over St. Louis.
• The 2015 wild-card round format pitted the 7th and 8th seeds directly against each other, meaning the Wild and Blues had no path to the second round except by beating one another.
• Mikko Koivu had served as Wild captain since the franchise's early years, making the 2015 first-round win one of the most significant playoff victories of his tenure.
• The Wild-Blues rivalry is rooted in the Central Division, which places the two teams in the same divisional group and guarantees multiple regular-season meetings every year.