A few signs this morning point to more potential injuries to be announced for Minnesota Wild players.
Injuries for Wild Players
- Jonas Brodin: Upper-body, Long-Term Injured Reserve, Week-to-week
- Kirill Kaprizov: Upper-body, Injured Reserve, Week-to-week
- Mats Zuccarello: Upper-body, Injured Reserve, Week-to-week
- Filip Gustavsson: Lower-body, Injured Reserve, Week-to-week
- Vinni Lettieri: Lower-body, Injured Reserve, Day-to-day
- Marcus Foligno: Lower-body, Day-to-day
Today, the Wild canceled team practice for the day with short notice. As a result, the only players on the ice were Jon Merrill, who has been a healthy scratch, Zane McIntyre, who has been the backup goalie to Marc-Andre Fleury, and Mats Zuccarello, who is already working back from an injury.
Then, the Wild announced that they moved forward Kirill Kaprizov to Injured Reserve. This isn’t as restrictive as Long-Term Injured Reserve, which requires injured players to sit out a significant time before coming back to the team. Just plain Injured Reserve means that a player will be unable to play for at least seven days after the injury and they can replace them on the roster. A player on Injured Reserve can still travel, meet with, and practice with their NHL team while they are on Injured Reserve.
Injured Reserve does not remove their salary from the salary cap like Long-Term Injured Reserve does. Instead, it frees up a roster space to call up another player from the AHL to take their place. An NHL team can only carry 23 active players at any time.
Moving Kaprizov to injured reserve plus the sudden practice cancellation could point to more injuries for the Wild. Hopefully, these injuries could simply be minor ones that may heal with an extra day of rest. But be on the lookout for more announcements from the Wild today or tomorrow for call-ups before the Wild play the Tampa Bay Lightning at home Thursday night.
