(My Sportsbook) - The Dallas Stars got a taste of what any playoff opponent might be in for if they draw the upstart Minnesota Wild in the first round.

Former Stars backup Manny Fernandez made 31 saves and four different Minny players scored first-period goals, as the Wild posted a 4-2 victory over the Stars at the Xcel Energy Center.

Darby Hendrickson, Filip Kuba, Andrew Brunette and Antti Laaksonen scored for the Wild, who opened a 4-0 lead after 20 minutes and held on for their second straight win.

Jere Lehtinen and Jason Arnott scored for the Stars, who had a two-game winning streak stopped and lost for the second time in their last six (4-2-0). Dallas still holds the top seed in the Western Conference, but remained one point behind East-leading Ottawa in the race for the Presidents' Trophy.

Dallas goaltender Ron Tugnutt entered the night with shutouts in his last two games, but allowed four goals on 10 shots in the first period and was given the rest of the night off. Corey Hirsch stopped the nine shots he faced over the last two periods.

"The disappointment was our team play," coach Dave Tippett said. "It would have been easy to just take Tugger out of there and blame it all on Tugger. None of those goals were his fault."

Tugnutt's shutout streak ended at 128 minutes and 40 seconds when Hendrickson scored his first goal of the season at 7:14 of the opening period. Hendrickson split a pair of Dallas defenders as he took a pass from Lubomir Sekeras, then snapped a shot from the left circle past the netminder.

Kuba made it 2-0 at the 11:43 mark, beating Tugnutt with a shot from the left circle for his seventh goal, and Brunette increased the lead just over three minutes later on a power play when he tipped in a Cliff Ronning shot for his 16th goal.

Laaksonen finished the first-period uprising with 4:02 left, as he took a pass from Richard Park and slipped a shot from the left circle past a sliding Tugnutt for his 12th goal.

The Stars were blanked on 20 shots through two periods, but tried to mount a comeback in the third when Lehtinen scored just 1:03 into the stanza. He knocked in the rebound of an Arnott shot on a two-man power play for his 29th goal. Arnott then scored at the 6:57 mark, flipping a shot home from in front of the crease for his 19th marker, to pull Dallas within two.

The way the standings are set now, the Stars would not face the Wild in the opening round. Minnesota is tied with Anaheim fir sixth in the Western Conference with 80 points -- six behind St. Louis and four ahead of Edmonton.

However, the Stars' lead in the West is only three ahead of Vancouver and Detroit, and both clubs hold a game in hand. In other words, things could be shuffled up before all is said and done.

UP NEXT

The Stars will close out a three-game road trip Saturday against Edmonton, which would be their first-round adversary if the playoffs began today.