The Minnesota Wild and the St. Louis Blues were two of the best teams in the NHL down the stretch of the regular season, with these long-running rivals locked in a relentless heavyweight fight for second place in the Central Division.

After nudging ahead of the Blues by winning their last two games, the Wild earned the extra home game in the first round.

The Wild established a slew of franchise records, including points (113), wins (53) and goals (305), and finished behind only Colorado in the Western Conference.

The Blues had 109 points, 10 better than their 2018-19 team that went on to win the Stanley Cup. They won all three matchups with the Wild: in the Winter Classic at Target Field (6-4) and a pair of overtime decisions in St. Louis last month (4-3 and 6-5).

The Wild will host Game 1 on Monday and Game 2 on Wednesday. If the series goes the distance, they’ll have Game 7 on May 14 at Xcel Energy Center, where they went 31-8-2 this season.

The last time the Wild had home-ice advantage in a playoff series was, fittingly, against the Blues in the first round in 2017 when they lost in six games.

Over the final six weeks of the regular season, the Wild led the league with a plus-30 goal differential, according to Sportradar data. The Blues were tied with Calgary and Edmonton for second best in that span at plus-24.

For the Blues, center Brayden Schenn and defenseman Marco Scandella were on the ice with the team on Sunday and on track for Game 1 after recent injury absences.

The Blues were third in the NHL with 309 goals, featuring nine players who hit the 20-goal mark: Vladimir Tarasenko, Pavel Buchnevich, David Perron, Jordan Kyrou, Ivan Barbashev, Schenn, Brandon Saad, Ryan O’Reilly and Robert Thomas.

The Wild were fifth in the league, after Kirill Kaprizov set the franchise record with 47 goals and Ryan Hartman (34), Kevin Fiala (33), Eriksson Ek (26) and Foligno (23) also established career highs. Zuccarello had 24 goals — and 55 assists.

Game 1 is tonight.