Middleton’s Injury May Affect Minnesota’s Deadline Plans

It’s been a surprising year for the Minnesota Wild. After missing the playoffs last year, they’ve accrued the second-most points in the Western Conference up to this point in the regular season.

They’re still cap-strapped, too, thanks to the buyouts of Zach Parise and Ryan Suter, with the team still owing the pair a combined $14.7MM this season. The Wild needed to stay diligent in their efforts to accrue up cap space throughout the regular season to eventually add a substantive complementary piece at the trade deadline.

Minnesota has unfortunately hit a few roadblocks in the form of injuries. The team already had to place forward Mats Zuccarello on long-term injured reserve with a lower-body injury earlier in the season and placed underrated defenseman Jacob Middleton on it yesterday.

In an interview with Michael Russo of The Athletic (Subscription Article), general manager Bill Guerin explains that the latest LTIR placement may affect the team’s chances of acquiring a top-six forward at this year’s deadline. Russo quoted Guerin saying, “Yeah, I mean, it probably will. And again, that’s just one of those things. We can’t control it. We’ve been doing our best to build up cap space as we go along. But things happen and we can’t necessarily control it all the time. We’ll see what we can do though. That’s a couple months away. So we’ll see.”

According to PuckPedia, the Wild should have a projected deadline cap space of $5.4MM, barely enough to acquire the top-six winger they’ve needed for much of the season. The available cap space will shrink should Middelton’s injury keep him on LTIR longer than expected.

To their credit, Minnesota has blown past their expectations this season while dealing with numerous injuries. Jared Spurgeon, Jonas Brodin, and Joel Eriksson Ek have each missed considerable time with injury this season but the Wild have still found success without deploying a full roster for much of the year.