ST. PAUL, Minn - This Minnesota Wild (22-9-5) team just keeps on rolling. Even without five-plus guys a night the Wild continued to win games.

On Saturday against the Edmonton Oilers (17-13-6), the Wild welcomed back five players from injuries. You would think that would stop the train but it didn't.

The Wild are now 7-0-0 in their last seven games and 17-2-2 in their last 21 games.

It was impressive how the Wild played to say the least. Getting Marcus Johansson back meant the Wild could put back together the Johansson line with Joel Eriksson Ek and Matt Boldy. That line has been one of the best shutdown lines in the whole NHL.

With the Oilers in town there is no doubt they have the best player in the league in Connor McDavid. But Leon Draisaitl isn't too far behind.

Against elite stars, the instinct is often to tighten the screws. To hard-match every shift, shorten the bench, and try to win the game on the matchup board. Especially with the home ice advantage.

But the Wild didn’t do that Saturday and according to John Hynes, that restraint was by design.

Hynes made it clear postgame that Eriksson Ek’s line carried the primary responsibility against McDavid's line, while the rest of the forward group stayed in rhythm.

“When you hard match like that, I don’t want to hard match two or three lines because then I think it takes players out of their rhythm, particularly up front.”

Even with Jonas Brodin back in the lineup, the Wild decided to match Quinn Hughes and Brock Faber against McDavid. They went with mainly Brodin and Jared Spurgeon against the Draisaitl line as well.

“Obviously Ekky’s line was the hard match on that. Then with Draisaitl’s line, we flipped around a couple different lines as much," Hynes said on the matchups. "On the back end we felt, Hughsie’s a good player. He’ a top-end guy in the league, and he can skate as well. The two pairs, you can feel you can against either one of those two lines.”

Despite the occasional flashes from McDavid the Wild shut him down at even-strength. With Hughes on the ice against McDavid, the Wild had a 13-6 shot on goal advantage. That was 74.6% expected goals (xG) and 1-0 advantage on actual goals at 5-on-5, per Natural Stat Trick.

Out of Hughes' 24:53 of ice time, he played 12:22 of them against McDavid.

Hughes is no stranger to McDavid. Being on the Vancouver Canucks for as long as he was, he has seen McDavid a lot. Despite shutting him down, Hughes thought it was more of a team effort.

"I mean, yeah, I think we have some really good D. Our forwards help with that, our systems help with that, our goalie made some saves. But they’re going to get their looks, they’re just that good but I felt like we did a good job on them."

As you can see McDavid was limited to just four shots off the rush. He had six shots in the game but when his line entered the zone they only got four shots off the rush.

The game plan wasn’t just about stopping McDavid completely. It was about not letting the game unravel trying to stop him.

By hard-matching selectively, trusting their defense, and keeping their forward group in rhythm, the Wild avoided the exact trap that elite teams set by forcing opponents to chase shadows.

It’s subtle. It doesn’t show up on a line-matching chart. But it’s exactly the kind of thinking that holds up in tight games against elite opponents and in April.

Brodin and Spurgeon had their licks against McDavid and Draisaitl and shut them down as always. In fact, Draisaitl entered the zone 15 times off the rush and his line only got one shot.

"Yeah, I think I was maybe rusty in the first two, and we got five guys back from injury too," Brodin said of his play. "But I think in the second – we talked about it after the first – could be more simple and break out the pucks a little bit better and then I thought we did it in the second and, yeah, we played tighter, I think. They had some good shifts and we had some good shifts, but I thought overall we were the better team."

That’s what stood out most Saturday. The Wild didn’t chase McDavid or try to win the game from the bench. They stayed within themselves, trusted their structure, and trusted that the details would hold up over 60 minutes.

Against a team with that much high-end skill, that kind of patience matters.

That’s why this stretch feels real. The Wild aren’t winning because everything is breaking perfectly or because someone is standing on their head every night. They’re winning because their habits don’t change when the opponent gets better.

When space disappears and games tighten up, that’s the type of hockey that carries. Not just now, but when the games start to look a lot like this one later in the season.

"It's such a fun challenge for the team," Filip Gustavsson, who stopped 28-of-30 in the win, said. "In tight games, we really need to play our best. In other games we kind of got a head start and could kind of ride on the wave a little bit in those games. Today was all the way to the end, until we scored that empty net goal. Tomorrow is hopefully going to be a similar game when it's going to be super tight and we're going to put our best out there."

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