You can find places to park around the arena if you're willing to pay a few buck, IF you are early enough. Hard to say what early enough has to be, though. We park in the neighborhood but you have to hoof it many blocks, but it saves on parking $.
There are bars in the vacinity but between games they get super loaded. If you like that, great. If not, you can do one of two things. You can drive somewhere between games to find a beer and a bite, or you walk a little farther to find an out of the way place that isn't so crowded.
My crew doesn't care to be packed in to a place close by. In the past we've driven to somewhere else between games, but you risk losing your parking spot, and it can be tough to get somewhere and back on time for the night game, and not feel like you're rushing around.
Last year it worked pretty good for us to walk over to Great Waters Brewery for the alumni party. It's not quite the exuberant atmosphere but it's not bad, and there's beer and food. You pay a cover to enter too, so that's the one downer. But for us that works out very well.
If you look up the Xcel Center on the internet you should be able to find parking locations on their website. You can then do a search for St. Paul restaurants/bars on the net to get an idea of some likely spots, and where they are. That's what we've done in the past and just chosen this or that place and tried it out.