Wild depth will be tested as injuries start to mount

Dane Mizutani, Pioneer Press
·3 min read
  • Oops!
    Something went wrong.
    Please try again later.

Dean Evason loves to remind people that the Wild are not a team led by a single player.

Though superstar winger Kirill Kaprizov is capable of taking over a game by himself on any given night, the Wild are at their best when they are rolling their lines.

“We need everyone,” Evason said. “We need to play with four lines and six defensemen, and when we do, we’ll give ourselves a chance every night.”

That statement hits different considering the current state of the Wild roster. The injuries are starting to mount, and the depth is about to be tested.

It started a week and a half ago when winger Jordan Greenway made his season debut only to leave the game after 2 minutes, 58 seconds of ice time. He did not travel with the team on the just completed, 10-day road trip to points east and his status is unclear for home games against the Montreal Canadiens and Seattle Kraken on Tuesday and Thursday, respectively.

As if that absence wasn’t already tough enough, winger Marcus Foligno missed Sunday’s 4-3 shootout win over Chicago Blackhawks with an upper-body injury, and winger Ryan Hartman suffered an upper-body injury shortly after deciding to drop the gloves.

“Some big guys out,” said Matt Boldy, who had a pair of goals against Blackhawks and is in position to get big minutes for the Wild. “It’s a chance to step up and play a bigger role, so it’s exciting. But obviously we want to get those guys back in the lineup as quick as we can. They are huge for our team.”

It will be interesting to see how Evason shuffles his lines this week without some of his heaviest hitters. On Monday afternoon, the Wild recalled forward Steven Fogarty from the Iowa Wild under emergency conditions. Signed to a two-way contract in July, Fogarty, 29, has one goal and three points in six games with Iowa.

“You can go down our list of guys,” Evason said. “We’re going to need everyone to step up now.”

Someone that has stepped up over the past few games is winger Mason Shaw. He got called up a week and a half ago and has impressed so much that he probably would have stuck around even if the Wild were fully healthy. Now that they are battling through some injuries, Shaw is going to get an even bigger opportunity to make an impact.

“I was feeling pretty good tonight,” Shaw said after scoring the first goal of his NHL career against the Blackhawks. “Just trying to earn the trust of the coaches here and do what I can to get a little bit more ice time when it comes.”

The same goes for every player on the team. That’s how the Wild are designed.

“That’s the culture here: It’s next man up,” center Connor Dewar said. “It’s a bring-it-on type of mentality.”

Related Articles