MINNEAPOLIS, MINN (Valley News Live) - For the first time in over a decade, the Minnesota Wild are advancing beyond Round 1 of the Stanley Cup Playoffs.

The Minnesota Wild have won their first playoff series since 2015, eliminating the Dallas Stars in Game 6 Thursday night, 5-2.The Stars kept up with Minnesota for most of the game as Quinn Hughes and Vladimir Tarasenko scored the first two goals for the Wild.

The Quinn Hughes trade gave the Minnesota Wild unprecedented optimism heading into the postseason. Finally, the team had the big-name starpower to take on all comers, or at least, in theory. There was still the tricky matter of,

The Minnesota Wild can close out their first-round playoff series against the Dallas Stars win a victory in Game 6. The Wild lead the series 3-2. The puck line is set at Minnesota -1.5 with an over/under of 5.

The Wild’s tree-planting initiative led St. Paul RiverCentre to create Trees for Travel. The program allows events at the Grand Casino Arena, St. Paul RiverCentre and Roy Wilkins Auditorium to offset attendees’ travel emissions by purchasing carbon credits from Green Cities Accord.

The Minnesota Wild are not known for being a beefy team. Their most important players include Kirill Kaprizov (5-foot-10), Quinn Hughes (5-foot-10), Jared Spurgeon (5-foot-9), and Mats Zuccarello (5-foot-8).

The Minnesota Wild will try to eliminate the Dallas Stars from the NHL Playoffs Thursday night without Jonas Brodin.

Previously extinct in Minnesota, the video is the first documented evidence that cougars are reproducing in the state in more than 100 years according to the Department of Natural Resources.