The Wild will be without winger Jason Zucker for the next little while. They announced that he has undergone successful surgery to repair a fractured right fibula and that he will miss the next four-to-six weeks as a result.
The injury was sustained back on Sunday against Chicago early in the game after taking a shot to his leg on a dump-in attempt. Surprisingly, he didn’t miss a shift despite being helped off the ice and wound up logging 16:33 in the contest which is slightly higher than his season average.
This is certainly a tough blow for Minnesota who is within striking distance of a Wild Card spot. Zucker sits second on the Wild in scoring behind only Eric Staal and had been picking up his production as of late, collecting seven goals and five assists over his previous 14 games.
The fact that he will miss at least a month means that he’s eligible to be placed on LTIR if they need to open up short-term extra cap space although they have enough cap room to call up a replacement from AHL Iowa, something that they’ll likely need to do so as they’re now down to just 12 healthy forwards on their active roster.