The Blackhawks will make their first visit to Minnesota on Tuesday when they face the Wild in a Central Division matchup at the Xcel Energy Center in Saint Paul.
Perhaps the only team that’s endured a more violent roller-coaster ride this season than the Blackhawks is the Wild. It started poorly in Minnesota, with the Wild losing six of their first seven games. By mid-December, though, they’d surged to a 16-12-5 record and were starting to entertain talk of a playoff berth. Since then? A 7-10-1 stretch that has Minnesota seven points back in the wild card chase — although they do own games in hand against three of the four teams they’d need to pass to secure the second wild card spot.