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Afternoon Notes: Kaprizov, Kelemen, Timmins

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Michael Russo of The Athletic tweeted this morning that Minnesota Wild winger Kirill Kaprizov was absent from practice and was replaced in the line rushes by Nic Petan. The Wild are calling it a maintenance day for the 26-year-old as he is banged up at the moment. Kaprizov had an assist in the Wild’s 8-3 drubbing at the hands of the Dallas Stars on Saturday night but played just 16:49, which is a dramatic decrease from the 21:21 in ice time he has been averaging this season.

Kaprizov does have five goals and 10 assists in 15 games this season, but his play has seemed off despite the offensive success. He is -11, and while that number can be misleading, his turnover numbers are not. Kaprizov has turned the puck over in almost every game this season, far outpacing his previous career numbers. He also appears to be struggling when he is deployed against other team’s top star players.

In other afternoon notes:

  • The Arizona Coyotes have announced today that they’ve placed forward Jack McBain on injured reserve and in a corresponding move they’ve recalled forward Milos Kelemen from their AHL affiliate the Tucson Roadrunners. The 24-year-old is looking to get into the Coyotes lineup for the first time this season after dressing in 14 games last year. The native of Svolen, Slovakia registered a single goal in the NHL last season but was much more productive in his first AHL season posting 14 goals and 16 assists in 59 games with the Roadrunners. This year, Kelemen is posting offense at about the same pace with two goals and four assists through his first 11 games. Kelemen struggled under poor possession numbers and defensive zone starts in his first run with the Coyotes and will be looking to show he belongs in the NHL if he gets back into the Coyotes lineup.
  • TSN’s Mark Masters is reporting that Toronto Maple Leafs defenseman Conor Timmins practiced this morning in a normal jersey for the first time since September. The 25-year-old has yet to dress for the Maple Leafs this season after being sidelined with a lower-body injury during what was an impressive preseason as he collected six points in three preseason games and made a case for himself to be in Toronto’s top six. Last season the St. Catherines, Ontario native posted two goals and 12 assists in 27 NHL games.

Wild Activate Jared Spurgeon, Send Daemon Hunt To AHL

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4:10 PM: Minnesota Wild head coach Dean Evason announced that Spurgeon will, indeed, play in the team’s Friday night outing.

4:00 PM: The Minnesota Wild have activated team captain Jared Spurgeon from long-term injured reserve and sent Daemon Hunt to the minor leagues. Spurgeon has been on injured reserve for the entirety of the early season, battling an upper-body injury.

Getting Spurgeon back is a tremendous boost to a Wild lineup that’s struggled to get on the right side of the win column. The team currently has a 5-6-2 record through 13 games, ranking them sixth in the Central Division. But now they get back a pillar of their lineup in Spurgeon, who has averaged over 21 minutes of ice time for the club in every season since 2011-12. He scored 11 goals and 34 points last season, taking a slight step down from the 40 points he managed in the 2021-22 campaign.

Daemon Hunt appeared in his first five NHL games while helping to fill in for Spurgeon. He wasn’t able to net his first NHL box stat though, going without a point, penalty, or change in his +/-. He’ll return to the AHL’s Iowa Wild, where he’s already played four games this season – failing to record a point in those games as well, although he did record seven penalty minutes and a -3.

With the news of his Friday return, Spurgeon will have missed 12 games to start the season. The 33-year-old defenseman will have the potential to play in, at most, 69 games this season. The team captain is chasing his 400th NHL point, currently sitting 21 points back from the milestone

Jared Spurgeon To Miss Next Two Games

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The Minnesota Wild will remain without captain Jared Spurgeon in the lineup for at least the next two games, GM Bill Guerin told the media today (via Joe Smith of The Athletic). At the earliest, Spurgeon could make his season debut on Sunday against the Dallas Stars, which Guerin dubbed a “possibility.”

  • San Jose Sharks defenseman Jacob MacDonald was placed on injured reserve earlier today in a corresponding transaction to the acquisition of Calen Addison from the Minnesota Wild, and head coach David Quinn confirmed today that he’ll miss the minimum one week required to be on IR but not necessarily much more. Injuries have limited MacDonald to just two appearances this season, but he did log a two-point effort in the team’s 10-2 blowout at the hands of the Pittsburgh Penguins recently. In fact, MacDonald has only suited up in the Sharks’ back-to-back 10-goal concessions, recording a -5 rating and averaging just north of 12 minutes per game.

Wild Acquire Zach Bogosian From Lightning

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The Minnesota Wild have acquired defenseman Zach Bogosian from the Tampa Bay Lightning in exchange for a seventh-round pick in the 2025 NHL Draft, per a team release.

This is the team’s second trade involving a defenseman today after dealing the much younger Calen Addison to the San Jose Sharks for a 2026 fifth-round pick and depth forward Adam Raška. Overall, the Wild have spent an additional $25K against the cap, acquired a slightly higher-value draft pick, and taken on a low-ceiling prospect for swapping Addison for Bogosian on the NHL roster.

Bogosian, 33, is in the final season of a three-year deal signed with the Lightning in 2021 and costs $850K against the cap, although he’s set to earn $1.05MM in actual salary this season. The veteran shutdown defender and 2008 third-overall pick has a modified no-trade clause affording him a 21-team no-trade list, per CapFriendly, meaning the Wild were among Bogosian’s top ten desired destinations for a trade.

This is a nice change of scenery for Bogosian, who won the Stanley Cup with Tampa in 2020. He unexpectedly hit the waiver wire during preseason (and cleared) to offer the Lightning some salary cap flexibility, although he was recalled back to the NHL after the team’s opening night game against the Nashville Predators. Bogosian has played in four out of 13 games for the Lightning this season, averaging a career-low 11:57 per game and failing to get on the scoresheet.

The deal marks somewhat of a homecoming, as Bogosian lives in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area during the offseason, and his older brother, Aaron, works in the Wild’s front office, per Michael Russo of The Athletic. It’s undeniably a downgrade for the Wild, though, who take on a veteran with dwindling advanced metrics and subpar traditional defensive metrics over the past two seasons while losing out on a promising puck-moving blueliner.

On Tampa’s end, the deal should mean more opportunity for 25-year-old Nicklaus Perbix. He’s been a healthy scratch twice this season and has gotten off to a disappointing start, recording three assists in 11 games while posting some of the worst even-strength possession numbers on the team with a Corsi share of just 41.1%. Tampa will now rely on him to recapture his rookie season form that saw him post 20 points in 69 games while playing solid defensive hockey last season.

The Lightning also have Haydn Fleury and Philippe Myers stashed in the minors on the AHL’s Syracuse Crunch available for recall. Between them, they have nearly 400 games of NHL experience.

Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman was the first to report Bogosian was coming to the Wild, while Michael Russo of The Athletic was the first to report the return.

Wild Trade Calen Addison To Sharks

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Michael Russo of The Athletic is reporting that the Minnesota Wild have traded defenseman Calen Addison to the San Jose Sharks for a fifth-round pick. The 23-year-old has five assists in 12 games so far this season and will join a rebuilding Sharks team that just won its first game of the season last night. According to Russo, the draft pick appears to be a 2026 selection and the Wild will also receive minor-league right winger Adam Raska in the deal. Raska is currently playing in the AHL for the San Jose Barracuda and has zero points in seven games this season.

On the surface, the move is a peculiar one for the Wild, Addison was a second-round pick of the Pittsburgh Penguins in 2018 and was a central part of the trade package the Penguins sent to the Wild in exchange for Jason Zucker. Last season, Addison posted three goals and 26 assists in 62 games in what was his first full season in the NHL. Those numbers, while impressive, do require some context. 18 of Addison’s 26 assists came on the powerplay, and while his offensive instincts are obvious, his defensive shortcomings leave a lot to be desired. Last season, Addison was a -17, and while that statistic can be misleading, a deep dive into his defensive analytics will tell you a very similar story. Things got so bad defensively last season that Addison went through a stretch where he was a healthy scratch in 25 out of the 35 games (including regular season and playoffs). During this stretch, the Wild traded for John Klingberg who took over powerplay responsibilities from Addison and his spot in the lineup. This led to Addison spending most of the summer without a contract extension before ultimately signing a one-year $825K deal on September 19. Now with the trade, Addison will close a very uneven run in Minnesota.

From the Sharks’ perspective, the move makes total sense, the club is rebuilding and gets to acquire a right-shot offensively-minded defenseman for almost nothing. If Addison is unable to turn his defensive game around San Jose can simply non-tender him in the offseason and walk away from Addison without any long-term ramifications. Sharks general manager Mike Grier has decided that a fifth-round pick and an AHLer is worth rolling the dice on a player who could develop into a long-term fixture on the Sharks powerplay when they emerge from their current rebuild.

In addition to the trade, the Sharks have also recalled forward Oskar Lindblom from the AHL and defenseman Jacob MacDonald has been moved to the injured reserve.

Spurgeon Close To Return

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Having already satisfied his long-term injured reserve requirements, Minnesota Wild captain, Jared Spurgeon, was eligible to return to the team’s game against the New York Rangers, but was still not fully available. Speaking with head coach Dean Evason today, Dylan Loucks of The Hockey News reports that Spurgeon may return to the lineup on the team’s current road trip.

Because there has been no official word up to this point, it is unlikely that Spurgeon will be back in the lineup tomorrow as the Wild take on the New York Islanders, but with games against the Buffalo Sabres and Rangers at the end of the weeks, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to see Spurgeon back at that point.

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Minnesota Wild Recall Nic Petan

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The Minnesota Wild have recalled forward Nic Petan to the NHL roster. Petan has appeared in 10 AHL games so far this season, recording one goal and 12 points. That tally ranks him 15th in the league in scoring, and second in the league in assists.

Petan’s recall comes in the midst of an injury to Frédérick Gaudreau, who has been out with injury since the team’s October 24th game. He’s appeared in six games through the early season, going without a point and a -2. Gaudreau has cemented himself as a serious lineup piece for the Wild through the last two seasons, scoring 44 points in 76 games in his first year with the club and 38 points in 82 games last season. While that’s a step down in total scoring, Gaudreau did score a career-high 19 goals last year, a mark that ranked fifth on the team.

With Gaudreau out with injury, Petan’s recall gives Minnesota another aging centerman with plenty of professional experience. Petan has appeared in 164 career NHL games, most recently playing 10 games with the Wild last season. He scored three points last year, bringing his career point total up to 33. He’s also recorded 44 career penalty minutes.

While Petan hasn’t shown strong scoring at the NHL level, he flashed what he’s capable of in the AHL last year, netting 62 points in 53 games with the Iowa Wild. That was the most on the Iowa Wild – 11 points more than Marco Rossi, who ranked second.

Minnesota is currently tied with the Tampa Bay Lightning for seventh in the league in scoring, with 40 goals through their first 11 games. They will look to Petan to help maintain that scoring, if he’s able to slot into the NHL lineup.

2009 NHL Draft Take Two: Sixteenth Overall

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Hindsight is an amazing thing, and allows us to look back and wonder “what could have been.” Though perfection is attempted, scouting and draft selection is far from an exact science and sometimes, it doesn’t work out the way teams – or players – intended. For every Patrick Kane, there is a Patrik Stefan.

We’re looking back at the 2009 NHL Entry Draft and asking how it would shake out knowing what we do now. Will the first round remain the same, or will some late-round picks jump up to the top of the board?

The results of our redraft so far are as follows, with their original draft position in parentheses:

1st Overall:  Victor Hedman, New York Islanders (2)
2nd Overall: John Tavares, Tampa Bay Lightning (1)
3rd Overall: Ryan O’Reilly, Colorado Avalanche (33)
4th Overall: Matt Duchene, Atlanta Thrashers (3)
5th Overall: Chris Kreider, Los Angeles Kings (19)
6th Overall: Nazem Kadri, Phoenix Coyotes (7)
7th Overall:  Mattias Ekholm, Toronto Maple Leafs (102)
8th Overall: Evander Kane, Dallas Stars (4)
9th Overall: Brayden Schenn, Ottawa Senators (5)
10th Overall: Oliver Ekman-Larsson, Edmonton Oilers (6)
11th Overall: Ryan Ellis, Nashville Predators (11)
12th Overall: Dmitry Orlov, New York Islanders (55)
13th Overall: Anders Lee, Buffalo Sabres (152)
14th Overall: Tyson Barrie, Florida Panthers (64)
15th Overall: Reilly Smith, Anaheim Ducks (69)

It’s a nice jump for Smith who goes from being an early third-round pick to a mid first-rounder after being picked here.  As was the case with the 14th pick, the margin of victory was quite narrow here with Smith receiving just under 20% of the votes.

Smith opted to forego the major junior route, instead spending his draft-eligible season at a tier below that level, retaining his NCAA eligibility.  He was quite productive in his draft year with St. Michaels of the OJHL and then followed that up by averaging just over a point per game in three seasons at Miami University, earning him his entry-level deal in 2012 where he made the jump to the NHL right away, getting into three games with Dallas that season.

While Smith spent half of the following year at the AHL level, he hasn’t been there since then.  However, his time with the Stars was limited as in the 2013 offseason, he was a key part of the trade that saw Tyler Seguin go to Dallas with Boston hoping that Smith could be an important piece of their future.

He fared pretty well with the Bruins, notching 20 goals and 51 points in his first full NHL season and followed that up with a 40-point showing the following year in 2014-15.  But Boston opted to do in a different direction the following summer, using Smith as an incentive to move Marc Savard’s LTIR contract in exchange for Jimmy Hayes.

Smith responded with a 25-goal, 25-assist campaign in his first year with Florida, earning him a five-year, $25MM contract.  Unfortunately for them, his production dipped again, this time to 37 points.  At that point, Smith once again became a cap casualty with the Panthers sending Vegas a draft pick to incentivize the Golden Knights to take him in expansion.

The change of scenery worked out well for Smith who once again had a career year in his first season with his new team, picking up 60 points, following that up with two more 50-plus-point efforts.  While his output dipped the next two years (one the COVID-shortened year and the other due to injury), the Golden Knights saw fit to give him a three-year, $15MM deal in 2022.

He rewarded them for that confidence with a 56-point performance just last season.  But once again, Smith found himself a salary cap casualty this past summer as Vegas sent him to Pittsburgh for a third-round pick.  He’s off to a nice start with his new team, picking up four points in as many games so far this season.

Smith sits tenth in scoring among players from this draft class and was the highest-producing player still left on the board.

Now, we turn our focus to the 16th selection which was held by the Minnesota Wild, who selected defenseman Nick Leddy but traded him before he even played an NHL game.  Leddy remains available in our redraft; is he still the right pick for them or should someone else go in that slot?  Make your selection by voting in our poll below.

If you can’t access the poll above, click here to vote.

Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.

Spurgeon Still Remains Out With Upper-Body Injury

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At the beginning of the season, captain of the Minnesota Wild, Jared Spurgeon, was designated as ’week-to-week’ after suffering an upper-body injury in a preseason matchup against the Chicago Blackhawks on October 5th. On October 25th, the team officially placed Spurgeon on the long-term injured reserve retroactive to the start of the regular season (October 12th), meaning Spurgeon would be out for 24 days and the team’s first 10 games.

Although it is a prudent move for any team not to rush back a key part of their team, getting Spurgeon back is becoming more and more imperative each game for Minnesota. Over the course of his career, Spurgeon has maintained a CF% (Corsi For %) above 50%, as well as an oiSV% (Team On-Ice Sv%) above 90%. For a team that is mightily struggling to keep the puck out of their own net, Spurgeon is an incredibly important piece for the Wild to get back into their lineup.

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Minnesota Wild Recall Daemon Hunt

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The Minnesota Wild have once again recalled Daemon Hunt to the NHL, in advance of a two-game homestand. Hunt has already been recalled once this season, playing in his first two NHL games before being sent back down to the minors on October 30th.

Hunt has emerged as a strong prospect for the Wild, after being drafted 65th overall in the 2020 NHL Draft. He made his professional debut during the 2020-21 season, playing in six AHL games thanks to an awkward Covid season, but his rookie AHL season didn’t come until 2022-23. Hunt played in 59 games last year, scoring 11 points and recording 14 penalty minutes. It was a relatively low-event year for the left defender, something that he’s continued into this season as he currently sits without a point through 4 AHL games and 2 NHL games.

But Hunt’s impact has never come on the offensive side of the puck. Instead, he’s a stout defender who uses great mobility to close gaps with puck handlers and force opponents to make decisions. Hunt said himself, “I think I’m at my best when I’m defending really hard — good gaps, good sticks, good box outs. I think just being really reliable, too.”

The Wild are turning to Hunt to operate as their seventh defenseman, with captain Jared Spurgeon and veteran Alex Goligoski both out with injuries. Spurgeon has returned to practice but won’t be eligible to return until at least November 7th, while Goligoski is on injured reserve with a lower-body injury. Both Hunt and Dakota Mermis have earned NHL games in the wake of these injuries, with Mermis scoring four points in seven games this season.

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