ST. PAUL, Minn. — The Minnesota Wild weren’t able to pull even in the standings with the Dallas Stars on Tuesday night because their division rival from the south forced overtime, then won on a power play to beat the Calgary Flames.

But not only will Thursday’s game in Dallas be a first-round preview for the third time in each organization’s history, it also will go a long way toward establishing home-ice advantage as the Wild remain only two points back of Dallas after Tuesday’s 5-2 whipping of the Seattle Kraken at home.

Just like the Stars against Calgary, the Wild rallied from a pair of one-goal deficits against Seattle and are once again feeling good about their game heading into Thursday’s final regular-season meeting with the Stars. Dallas does own the regulation wins tiebreaker (35 to 30 with four games left each) if both teams end the season with the same number of points.

The Wild and Stars have played twice before in the playoffs with Dallas winning both series in six games. Why can this year be different?

“We learned some lessons last time we played them,” said left wing Marcus Foligno, who scored a beautiful tying goal and had a scrap against the Kraken. “We know that they’re a really, really good team, and so are we. They have some lethal weapons. We’re just more educated, more experienced going into this series than we were before.

“We always like our chances. We’re positive. We’re excited to play that team. Thursday night is going to be a nice little appetizer, so to speak. We just gotta play solid against them. We just want to see our game really, get to that four lines where everyone’s contributing where it’s just predictable hockey for us and smart hockey by us.”

Tuesday night, Joel Eriksson Ek scored a goal and two assists, Matt Boldy and Marcus Johansson had a goal and assist each, Vladimir Tarasenko scored the game-winner and Jesper Wallstedt made 25 saves for his 17th win, establishing a new single-season Wild rookie goalie record.

The Wild played a little too loose against the Kraken and gave up a lot of rush chances, but overall, it was a solid win — the Wild’s fourth in a row — as they controlled most of the final two periods. The Wild are now 11-3-1 all-time against Seattle.

Minnesota will travel to Dallas on Wednesday to begin their final three-game road trip of the regular season that also includes games in Nashville and St. Louis.

Boldy, Tarasenko remain hot

One reason why the Wild feel so confident heading into the playoffs is because they feel they have three lines that can score.

Obviously, they have Kirill Kaprizov on the top line. But then there’s Boldy on the second line and Tarasenko on the third.

Boldy, after a seven-game drought, scored his fourth goal in the past four games in the first period Tuesday — his 42nd of the season, tying him with Eric Staal and Marian Gaborik for fourth-most in franchise history. The goal was originally waved off on the ice because the referee thought the puck deflected in off Boldy’s chest, but replays showed he got his stick on it afterward.

That goal tied the score at 1-1. In the second period, after Foligno’s tying goal, Tarasenko scored his 23rd goal and seventh in the past 11 games on a back-door tap-in after Ryan Hartman deflected Jared Spurgeon’s shot. On the goal, Hartman picked up his 11th point in the past seven games and Spurgeon tied Ryan Suter for the most assists among defensemen in Wild history (314).

Boldy later assisted on Johansson’s back-door slam dunk to give himself 83 points, tied for the fifth-most points in a season in Wild history.

“You need to be able to have the guys that are supposed to score — score and produce,” coach John Hynes said. “But then I think as it goes through, you want to get some action from your defensemen, but then I think the depth up front has certainly helped that.”

Johansson scores his 200th

On a tremendous play by Boldy to fend off Brandon Montour and spin for a backdoor pass, Johansson snapped an eight-game goal drought by slam-dunking his 200th goal. Eriksson Ek immediately fished the milestone puck out of the back of the net.

It was a pretty special moment for Eriksson Ek, who also assisted on the goal. He grew up in Karlstad, Sweden, so he got to watch Johansson a lot as a kid playing for hometown Färjestad.

“Everybody in here knows what kind of player he is,” Eriksson Ek said. “He is having a great career. If someone told me when I was a kid running around, when he was playing in Sweden, that (I would assist on his 200th, I wouldn’t believe) this would be the case. Just happy to be a part of getting to know him and getting to play with him has been a pleasure.”

Johansson was extremely relieved to get it over with, especially because he has not yet committed to playing beyond this season — a year in which he also played his 1,000th game.

“Feel like this last one hasn’t wanted to go in lately, but that’s the way it goes sometimes,” he said. “But nice to get it out of the way.”

There’s no doubt Johansson is one of the Wild’s most respected teammates.

“He’s a great, great Swede,” Wallstedt said. “Love being around him. It’s super easy to be with him, super inviting. He’s been very good to me and, obviously scores timely goals. He’s been great this year for us. And scoring important shots and doing the job that maybe not everyone sees. He is very valuable to us.”

Freddy Gaudreau returned to Minnesota for the first time since being traded to Seattle. (Matt Blewett / Imagn Images)

Gaudreau causes Seattle goal to be overturned

The Kraken thought they took a 3-2 lead not long after Foligno’s goal, but Wallstedt immediately motioned that he was interfered with by former Wild forward Freddy Gaudreau, who was returning to the Minnesota for the first time since being traded last summer.

As it turned out, Jaden Schwartz’s go-ahead goal was quickly wiped off the boards after Hynes challenged for goalie interference for the first time this season. Replays showed Gaudreau slashed Wallstedt’s glove and inhibited his ability to make the save.

“This one felt super obvious,” Wallstedt said. “It felt like this was one of those that you just kind of couldn’t have missed. And the ref was agreeing with me, too.”

Sturm, Hunt biding time

With five extra players, including injured Zach Bogosian, the Wild’s morning bag skates have been intense … and long. They go on for an hour after practice with assistant coaches. Tuesday morning, it consisted of Daemon Hunt, Nico Sturm, Robby Fabbri and Nick Foligno, who came out of the lineup Tuesday for Bobby Brink. Jeff Petry played his second game in a row for Bogosian (lower body).

Hunt has been scratched 17 games in a row since March 1. Asked if he’d like to get the defenseman a game or two before the playoffs in case Minnesota needs him in a pinch in the postseason, Hynes said, “The situation changes daily. We’ve considered all those things. Sturmy hasn’t been in in a little while, too. … We have three games this week. I think we’ll see how things progress over the week.”

It’s hard with home ice in the offing. To Hynes’ point, Sturm has been scratched seven games in a row and Fabbri has missed nine in a row.

If the Wild are healthy up front, it appears two of Nick Foligno, Danila Yurov and Brink will play with Sturm and Fabbri scratched.

Brink set up three scoring chances Tuesday but was cherry-picking out of the zone on Yurov’s turnover that led to Adam Larsson’s first-period goal. Yurov also accidentally redirected Brandon Montour’s goal past Wallstedt in the first, so he finished minus-2.