In Which the MN Wild Injury List Grows Longer

In this episode, Mikki regretfully gives an injury update for the MN Wild. She also covers the Wild vs. Flames game and how the Wild played well despite a loss.

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Injury Update for Wild
Recap of Wild/Flames Game (Including Vibes Recap!)

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HockeySheWrote

Wild Hockey Fan | Cozy Mystery Writer | Mom of 2 | MN Raised | She/Her | Hockey Takes that No One Asked For

What is Her Wild Side Hockey Podcast?

Her Wild Side combines hockey knowledge with a side of vibe checks. The weekly show will have game breakdowns, any topical news about the MN Wild, and fun things going on surrounding Wild's social media. This show aims to be informative while also sparking good conversation about the Wild and hockey in general without having to keep everything serious.

Hello, welcome to Her Wild Side Hockey Podcast.

I am Mickey, your host, aka HockeySheWrote.

And I am extra peppy right now because I'm trying to distract from all of the Minnesota Wild downer news that we have been receiving recently, including this morning.

I'm recording this on Wednesday morning, so they played the Calgary Flames at the Excel Center last night.

And just today, we've gotten more news.

So first, I want to talk a little bit about just who is injured, who is injured, what are they doing, and kind of what their status is.

So we've got Jonas Brodine.

He is on long term injured reserve.

Uh, upper body, we know he's been wearing a cast and he is listed as week to week.

We have Matt Zuccarello who is on injured reserve with an upper body week to week.

And he has actually been out skating, including this morning.

So that indicates, you know, he's getting a little bit closer.

We've got Kuro Kaprizov who is on injured reserve with an upper body injury week to week.

We also have Philip Gustafson on injured reserve with a lower body injury week to week.

Vanilla Terry is on injured reserve with a lower body injury day to day.

And Marcus Foligno, who was a game time decision last night, is out day to day with a lower body injury.

So what does that mean?

Now, here's the thing is for a long time, I didn't realize that there was a difference between injured reserve and long term injured reserve, mostly because I feel like maybe they should name them a little bit differently.

So like to distinguish from one and another.

But so I did some research and here is what it means.

Injured reserve means that they are going to be out for seven days or more.

So there's no they don't have to count games.

It's just seven days and they can still travel with the team.

They can still practice, go to meetings, whatever.

But they do not get any salary relief from this.

So when they moved Kirill Kaprizov this morning to injured reserve, they do not get his nine million off the books.

But what it does mean is that they can only carry a roster of 23 active players.

Moving someone onto the injured reserve list means that they can pull someone else up.

Because anyone on injured reserve, which Zuki, Kaprizov, Gus, Vinny, they do not count towards the 23.

So long-term injured reserve is important.

way different.

It is, they are going to be gone at least 30 days in which the NHL is playing.

So any breaks do not count and at least 10 NHL games.

But with this, at least you do get salary relief.

So Jonas Brodine is on long term and he is, his salary is not counting towards the salary cap right now.

So two different things.

So let's do a little review.

injured review, injured reserve, you guys too much, too many injuries, injured reserve, seven days, no cap relief, extra active players, long-term injured relief, 30 days, 10 games, salary relief.

So

There you go.

There's a little primer on long term injured reserve and injured reserve.

And hopefully now that I've explained it to you in the way that I finally understood it, you will also understand.

But let's move on, because what does that mean?

So when people are on injured reserve, long term injured reserve, obviously you have to fill their position.

So as we all likely know, we have pulled we the wild have pulled, I don't know, half of the Iowa Wild team up here, the AHL team.

We currently have Nick Patan, Jake Lucchini, Sammy Walker, Dakota Mermis, and Zane McIntyre all in the lineup, all pulled up from Iowa.

What's funny is Dakota Mermis kind of falls into what's been called the curse of the Iowa wild captain, which means that...

He was named the captain and has also spent a significant amount of time not with the Iowa Wild because the same thing happened to Mason Shaw when he was the captain of the Iowa Wild last year.

He was named the captain.

They pulled him up and then he stayed the rest of the season.

So it's a good curse, but a curse nonetheless.

Now, who in the world are we going to pull up next?

Well, here's the thing.

We don't actually know who is injured or could be injured because what happened is pretty much last minute.

I want to say within an hour of when practice was supposed to start, they announced that there would be no team practice today.

So what does that mean?

I'm assuming it means that there are players who may possibly be injured and perhaps a day of rest might just be enough to kind of help people over the hump of something they're trying to get rid of, or, um, perhaps just see how they are doing after a day of rest.

You know, we'll see if they pull anybody else up from Iowa, but who are they going to pull at this point?

If they have to pull a defenseman, which.

know last night at one point jared spurgeon missed a couple of his shifts and everyone was a little bit freaked out everyone being me uh but he was back on the bench and he did play the rest of the game so but if it is him most likely they would pull up damon hunt because he has been able to slot in pretty well with the blue line but forwards iowa wild is getting pretty thin

we've they've got probably um stephen fogarty or nick sweetie would be the next two that would be pulled up because adam beckman and judar kara who are both you know uh would probably be those next if they were not injured so they are both injured so they would kind of move down to fogarty or sweeney

And Jesper Valstead is also hurt, which we talked about in the last podcast.

But it looks like he is possibly coming back from injury sooner rather than later.

And John Hines has said in one of his press conferences that there's if he is back, there's a good chance that he will make.

you know, his NHL debut backing up flurry, you know, probably not on the ice, but at least we can get him up to Minnesota and sit him on the bench.

So that's kind of where we stand.

Both the Minnesota wild and the Iowa wild are just having some issues.

And I feel like we need to bubble wrap them.

I don't know.

I don't know.

So the next thing, and of course, I forgot that I was going to pull up a little something that I wanted to say, but that's OK, because I'll do it while I'm podcasting.

Last night, we all know the lineup was wonky, absolutely wonky.

We've got AHL players from second line down to fourth line.

We've got them in the blue line.

And again, there's nothing wrong with that.

It's just a very strange thing when

sitting at home watching the game, we've got Kirill Kaprizov, Philip Gustafson, Marcus Foligno, you know, just very impactful players.

And the very strangest thing.

So I think I've talked about this before.

Brett Marshall is on Twitter slash X, and he does a lot of stats and stuff, which is not necessarily my thing, but I do like to read about it.

And what he pointed out was that.

With no Foligno, Kaprizov, Brodine, Zuccarello, Gustafson, or Letary, the Minnesota Wild are once again icing a team with a cap hit of about $49 million.

Erickson X, Spurgeon, and Boldy are the only three skaters that are making more than $3 million a year.

And half of the roster from last night is making less than $1 million a year.

That is wild, folks.

And when I say that I'm not trying to make a pun, it's just absolutely wild.

But I'll tell you what, for what they had and who they had to put together, they brought a good game and they could have won that game.

We've got, you know, the goal scorer last night for the Wild, Pat Maroon.

uh, everyone needs to be on the Pat Maroon train.

We've talked about this before.

I've even gotten my brother, former Pat Maroon hater onto the Pat Maroon train.

And he was even the one that texts me immediately and was like, Pat Maroon's got some silky mitts.

Like, yeah, you know what?

I think Pat Maroon can do it all.

And he had the a last night, which I think is so fitting, but it's funny to think of, you know, you're in traded for him and,

in the summer.

And he came over here, I think Florida or Tampa Bay retained, you know, like a small portion of his, of his, uh, salary, but he was already making under a million and he has done so much for this club.

Not only is he a veteran presence and he's like a good voice in the leader, like in the leadership role in the locker room, he has at times at the beginning of the year, he was like a top scorer for the wild.

He has actually been putting some good points up.

He was struggled a little during December, but I mean, just an

Nobody thought that this was what Pat Maroon was going to be when he came.

At least I did not think so.

But so he scored the one goal and it was a really darn good goal.

If you want to see that goal, you didn't see it, whatever.

I will link my recap to the Calgary Flames Minnesota Wild game in the show notes so that you can see it because it is worth seeing.

Now, like I talked about, I give a vibe score now of each game.

And that is also included in the recap and kind of a little actual recap of the vibey parts in my overall recap.

It's like a nesting doll.

So first of all, we've got, at one point, Nazem Qadri

is going to try to smash Connor Dewar into the boards.

And I understand why he thinks he can do it because, uh, Kadri is not a, not a huge guy and Dewar is not a huge guy.

So Kadri takes a run at him, goes to smash him in the boards.

Dewar barely moves, you know, he like maybe scoots forward a little bit and, and Kadri just like pinballs off of him and is on the, on the ice before he even knows what's happening.

And I think that has solved the problem of why Dewar is called big Dew and

Overdue him.

At least that's the only reason that I can think of.

And then at one point we have Julie Erickson Eck is getting he gets tangled up with the goalie, Jacob Markstrom, of course, because Eck is in his normal place, which is all up in the face of the goalie of the opposing team.

And they somehow get tangled up and Markstrom holds on to the goalie.

The stick, I can't quite tell.

I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt.

I can't quite tell if it was necessarily intentional.

But Eck ends up getting up and dragging Markstrom down part of the ice.

He was just like, I don't care.

If I have to drag Markstrom all the way over to the wild's end of the ice, I'm going to do it.

And I think he probably could if he put his mind to it.

But probably the most vibey part of the game, the one thing that really just upped the vibe score.

I think I ended up giving it a seven because it was lower because of all the injuries.

Because, oh man, it's hard.

But if you watch the game, I'm sure that you will know what I'm about to say.

Brandon Duhame, in all of his silly glory, has provided us with another wonderful moment of on-ice spectacle.

He and a Flames player go down.

They are just inside the Wilds offensive zone, just on the side of the blue line.

The puck goes out.

Duhame's trying to get up, get all his stuff, get his stick and figure out what he's doing.

And then the puck starts to come back into the zone.

And Duhame realizes, I'm going to get this play off sides if I don't get out of here.

So he vaults himself, leaps, dives over the Flames player, over the blue line, into the neutral zone just in time.

And I don't think there are any other players on the team that would think to do that.

Duhame just has these brainstorms.

And sometimes they end up working out.

This is a lot like when he didn't have the stick and he used his skate to pass the puck to Connor Dewar.

know good on him because somehow these moments just tend to work out for him and i love that now again i'm just going to say it was a good game especially the second and the third period the wild pushed hard they tried what they really all they could do and i agree with what ryan carter was saying on the broadcast which is that they had the

the drive, the grit, the physicality.

They were getting all of that.

They were getting what they needed to get into the offensive zone, but they just didn't have that extra star power step to score another goal.

Because think about it.

Kirill Kaprizov, and I know that this year has been a little different, but think back to other seasons.

Where there were these points in time where you would see Kaprizov basically put the team on his back and be like, you know what?

We're going to win this game.

And he would put the puck in the net to tie it up, to win the game, to bring it to overtime.

He just has that other level because he is that superstar.

Without him and then also, you know, without Zuki or missing Foligno or missing, you know, like just there are so many holes and so many kind of new guys or, you know, guys that just aren't around very often.

They're playing the systems right.

You know, that's not they are doing things right.

But when you aren't used to playing with someone, it might just be that little bit that doesn't connect a pass or, you know, you just can't quite tell if they're going to pass it to you.

You know, there's just enough to kind of throw it off the mark.

So I'm kind of curious to see what happens, because like I said, they have put Kaprizov on injured reserve and.

Who knows what that means?

Does that mean more injury reports are going to be coming out?

Does that mean we're going to recall more people from Iowa?

What does that mean for the game tomorrow?

I'm at a loss.

I don't know.

Obviously, I don't have any insider information.

We all know that.

I say that many times because I just want to make that very clear.

I just do this because I love the game and I love the wild.

So, I mean, I will obviously keep my ear out and write up anything that I hear or that I see.

And until then, you know, I hope we're all going to cross our fingers and we are all going to send out the good vibes.

And I'm talking all of them.

Like, please send all of the good vibes that you can spare to the wild because they obviously need them.

But also remember that.

You are a hot girl.

You love hockey.

You're an absolute beauty.

And everyone is welcome.

So until next time, I will see you later.