There was no on-ice celebration, no champagne popped in the locker room.
In fact, the Wild might have been the first team in NHL history booed off the ice by its home crowd on a night it clinched a playoff berth.
The few thousand fans who didn't depart Xcel Energy Center early weren't thrilled with the Wild's 3-0 loss to San Jose and fourth consecutive defeat. But failing at a win-and-you're-in scenario for a second consecutive game didn't matter this time, since the Wild ended up clinching the final Western Conference playoff spot in an anticlimactic, uninspiring way: Colorado lost 4-3 at Nashville.
Wild players found out 10 minutes after leaving the ice.
"It's nice to get that over with," goalie Devan Dubnyk said. "It doesn't make you feel any better right now, but it's been talked about for the last week. It's nice to get it out of the way and we can shift our focus. I don't know if that was affecting what we were doing, but it doesn't have to anymore."
It was a fitting way for the Wild to make the playoffs during a long, meandering 2015-16 season that seven weeks ago cost coach Mike Yeo his job.
The Wild, 11th place in the West on Feb. 13 when Yeo was fired, will partake in the postseason despite having only 87 points heading into Saturday's regular-season finale against Calgary. The Wild finished last season with 100. It will enter the playoffs with more overall losses than wins (currently 38-43, 11 of the losses coming past regulation).
Doesn't matter, players and interim coach John Torchetti said.