The Wild has reason to believe three times can be a charm.
Yet again facing the Chicago Blackhawks, the team that ended the Wild’s season in each of the past two years, might seem like another daunting challenge, but the Wild feels it has grown up an awful lot the past few years.
Let’s just take the 2013 Wild team that ended a four-year playoff drought. That group was immature, inexperienced and almost happy to be there, and the Blackhawks treated them that way by easily overwhelming the Wild in the first round en route to a second Stanley Cup in four years.