Before last night’s game against the Montreal Canadiens, the Minnesota Wild announced that defenseman Alex Goligoski would miss the game due to a lower-body injury suffered in practice the day before. Today, according to a team announcement, the team has placed Goligoski on LTIR, and recalled forward Samuel Walker from their AHL affiliate, the Iowa Wild, in a corresponding move.
For the time being, the Wild will likely operate with only six defensemen on the active roster, with Dakota Mermis replacing Goligoski’s spot in the lineup. Team captain, Jared Spurgeon, is still listed as week-to-week as he recovers from an upper-body injury, but would give the team a much deeper blue line upon his return.
After an exceptionally poor start to the season in terms of production and penalties, this lower-body injury is another negative moment for Goligoski in this very young season. At 38 years old, and a pending unrestricted free agent at the end of this year, this may spell the end of the line for the veteran defenseman in Minnesota.
Walker, who was the 200th overall selection in the 2017 NHL Draft by the Tampa Bay Lightning, would end up playing four years at the University of Minnesota, before finally landing with the Wild in 2022 as a college free agent. Primarily playing in Iowa last season, Walker had quite a productive season, scoring 27 goals and 21 assists in 56 games, finishing fourth on the team in points.
Lack of depth will be the Wild’s demise this season.
They keep finding players in their system to replace injured players so they don’t seem to have a lack of depth. Between now and the end of the season, every team in the NHL will bring up players to cover for injuries. Does this mean that your lack of depth theory will apply to every team?
Wilf see we’ll see.
You have been wrong every post so far this season and like 95% of the time the past 2 seasons.
How on earth can Goligoski be expected to have high production numbers when the team has only played 3 games as of last night? The guy isn’t Kaprizov.