5 October 2023
Down to one group of 22 players and two exhibition games, training camp is beginning to look more like the regular season for the Minnesota Wild.
Thursday, for instance, the players went through a typical morning skate before their game against the Blackhawks instead of, say, a special teams practice or three-on-three drills. The big difference was they had to fly to Chicago for the 7:30 p.m. puck drop.
Otherwise, head coach Dean Evason is looking for something like the real thing over the last week of camp, starting against the Blackhawks at United Center.
“We’re playing a game, we’re two games away from the regular season starting. The intensity should be as high as it’s going to be in that first game,” Evason said after the morning skate. “Why shouldn’t it? They all know, we’ve talked about it, this is our group, this is what we want to play with, so they should be excited and ready to go.”
On Wednesday, the Wild stripped down to the bare essentials when they cut the last of the guys playing for a roster spot. Prospect Sammy Walker was sent outright to AHL Iowa, while forwards Jujhar Khaira, Vinni Lettieri, Nic Petan and defenseman Dakota Mermis were put on waivers.
All of them cleared and reported to Iowa, where they will likely play in an exhibition game on Friday against Rockford in Des Moines. The Wild plan to bring 12 forwards, seven defensemen and two goaltenders, one short of the NHL roster maximum, into the first week of the regular season — at least.
The players they cut weren’t going to play in Chicago on Thursday or against Dallas on Saturday at Xcel Energy Center as the Wild wrap of their six-game preseason schedule. And barring injury, an extra forward won’t play when the Wild open their regular season Oct. 12 against the Florida Panthers at the X — or in Toronto on Oct. 14 or Montreal on Oct. 17.
“There’s a lot of stuff that goes into (that decision), but the biggest thing is we want hockey players to play hockey instead of practice hockey,” Evason said.
With a roster full of regulars and/or veterans, a prospect or free agent was unlikely to make the team out of camp — especially on a team already scraping the NHL’s $82.5 million salary cap. So the parting message to those players was the same as it was when camp started Sept. 21: Go to Iowa, be ready.
“We want them to get going and play as many hockey games as they can,” Evason said. “We’ve talked about that from the beginning of camp, (that) we want to play more hockey. This is a way for all of those guys … to play hockey before they get back to here.”
Wild roster
Forwards: Matt Boldy, Connor Dewar, Brandon Duhaime, Joel Eriksson Ek, Marcus Foligno, Frederick Gaudreau, Ryan Hartman, Marcus Johansson, Kirill Kaprizov, Pat Maroon, Marco Rossi, Mats Zuccarello.
Defensemen: Calen Addison, Jonas Brodin, Brock Faber, Alex Goligoski, Jon Merrill, Jake Middleton, Jared Spurgeon.
Goaltenders: Marc-Andre Fleury, Filip Gustavsson.
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