It’s not exactly a playoff game, or even a game between two NHL heavyweights. But for the Wild and Nashville Predators, Thursday night’s game at Xcel Energy Center is a big one.

“We know what’s at stake,” Wild veteran wing and alternate captain Marcus Foligno said late Tuesday after a 5-3 victory over the Washington Capitals, the Wild’s fourth win in five games.

Thursday’s 7 p.m. puck drop is, in fact, the Wild’s first real four-point game of the season. When Nashville arrives in St. Paul, the Predators will be holding the eighth and final playoff position in the Western Conference, four points ahead of Minnesota.

The Wild have made up some good ground over the past 10 days, gaining four points in the playoff race and pulling into a tie with three of the four teams ahead of them in that race. A win would get the Wild back to where the Wild were after winning 11 of 13 games after John Hynes replaced Dean Evason as head coach on Nov. 28.

But the Wild, who have been segmenting their season into 10-game increments since Hynes took over, are working on a specific calendar, and it ends after Saturday’s home game against Anaheim — the team’s last game before their weeklong NHL All-Star Game break.

After the Wild lost a tight, 3-2 game to West-leading Winnipeg at the X on New Year’s Eve — part of a four-game losing streak that ballooned into losing 8 of 9 — Ryan Hartman said the Wild need to keep their heads down and work, then re-evaluate where the season is after the break.

The veteran forward stuck to that plan after Tuesday night’s win.

“We kinda wanted to get to this all-star break playing as best as we can, climbing as much as we can before that, and see where we’re at then,” he said. “Obviously, we kinda shot ourselves in the foot there a little bit for a stretch, but we’ve been playing good and winning. So, we’ve got a couple more here before and we want to keep climbing and then re-evaluate.”

Foligno said virtually the same thing on Tuesday, although he acknowledged that the Wild have “a really big, important game Thursday.”

“We’ve got to put ourselves back in position where we come back from the break refreshed and there’s no excuses (and) we’ve put ourselves in a good spot, three, four points back, and we can go,” he said. “So, that’s the focus going into the break.”

In the only game between Minnesota and Nashville this season — Hynes’ first against the team he coached last season — the Wild drilled the Predators, 6-1, on Nov. 30 in Nashville. Former Wild wing Andrew Brunette has the Predators 25-21-1 in his first season as head coach.

Big picture, the Wild are 15-11-1 and made some progress in the standings since Hynes became head coach. In the same big picture, however, they’re still 13th in the 16-team West and have a mountain to climb before they can reach the postseason for the third straight season — fourth if you include the truncated 2020-21 COVID season.

Hence the small, segmented view of the season.

“Right now, we’re just trying to take it in segments and focus on these three home games,” Foligno said. “I think that’s really what it is. We do a little bit in 10-game increments and try to win the 10-game sets, like 7 out of 10 — or above .500. But, obviously we know we need to lean toward 7 of 10 and records like that going forward here.”

As for Thursday’s game against Nashville, of course it’s big. But as Hartman pointed out, “Every game’s huge now, the way we started and with some of the stretches we’ve had. So, every game we play is a really big game — especially divisional games.”

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