It’s good news galore on the injury front for the Minnesota Wild, as along with superstar Kirill Kaprizov returning to the lineup on Saturday night against the St. Louis Blues, trade-deadline addition Gustav Nyquist will be making his Wild debut.
Nyquist has been out of action since Jan. 25 when the Columbus Blue Jackets had announced that he had been shut down for the season with a shoulder injury. However, when the Wild acquired him at the trade deadline, the timeline moved forward a bit to the final weeks of the regular season. There’s a likely chance that they wanted to get him into the lineup before the playoffs in order to not run into trouble with the league for LTIR shenanigans.
Nyquist is projected to slot in on the third line for the Wild alongside Sam Steel and Marcus Foligno. He will also get a shot on their second power play unit with Foligno, Ryan Hartman, Frederick Gaudreau and Jared Spurgeon.
Nyquist had a bit of a down season in his time with the Blue Jackets, with just 10 goals, 12 assists and 22 points in 48 games. However, that came on a team competing for a lottery spot, so it will be interesting to see how that changes on the Wild, but they aren’t an offensive juggernaut either.
It’s good timing for the Wild to get both forwards back, as they lost two other forwards on Thursday in Joel Eriksson Ek and Oskar Sundqvist, so at the very least they don’t have to make any drastic roster changes. There is also no rush for them to return this week, as they have their playoff spot locked up, so they really only need them to return for the playoffs.
The Wild are third in the Central Division with a 44-24-10 record, with all top three teams within two points of one another for the top spot in the division.
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