Among the rash of injury announcements out of Minnesota on Friday was that winger Charlie Coyle suffered a right fibula fracture and would miss the next six-to-eight weeks. While losing him certainly hurts, the fact he will miss that much time enabled them to place him on long-term injury reserve which freed up the cap space to bring up some replacements instead of potentially having to dress only nine forwards for their game today against Columbus.
The team wasted little time doing so, announcing the recalls of forwards Christoph Bertschy, Landon Ferraro, and Zack Mitchell from AHL Iowa and they will likely comprise their fourth line for the time being.
This will mark the third straight season that Baertschy has had a stint with Minnesota, having spent eight games combined with the team over the past two years. He spent the majority of last season in the minors, collecting 11 goals and 13 assists in 67 games.
Ferraro is in his first season with the Wild after signing with them in July. He has the most NHL experience under his belt with 75 games of experience between Detroit and Boston. He’s coming off an injury-plagued 2016-17 with the Blues where he got into just 22 games with their AHL affiliate but is off to a good start this season with a pair of assists in Iowa.
Mitchell got into 11 games with Minnesota last season but didn’t get on the scoresheet. He’s coming off a quiet 2016-17 in the minors as well as he tallied just 22 points with Iowa, well off his previous totals of 35 and 42 but the team saw enough in him to qualify him over the summer.
Even with the short-term LTIR, the Wild are fairly tight to the cap and have just over $1MM available to spend per CapFriendly but that’s enough for one more recall at some point. With Zach Parise and Mikael Granlund not yet ready to return, it will be interesting to see if they bring someone else up just to have a spare skater.