Wild captain Jared Spurgeon injured; Alex Goligoski will step in

The Wild will start the season without their captain.

Jared Spurgeon is sidelined week-to-week with an upper-body injury the defenseman suffered on Thursday night in a preseason game at Chicago, an absence that will usher the Wild's lone extra — Alex Goligoski — into action.

"No one's going to replace Spurge in this room or on the ice," said Goligoski, who is slotting into Spurgeon's spot on the blue line next to Jake Middleton. "So, it's a group effort from the rest of us 'D' and the forwards.

"Everybody's going to have to pull a little extra weight."

Spurgeon, 33, left the Wild's 3-2 shootout win after getting pushed into the boards by the Blackhawks' Reese Johnson with about a minute to go in the first period.

That game was the first time all preseason the Wild iced their full lineup, and they have one more dress rehearsal on Saturday vs. Dallas at Xcel Energy Center before opening the season on Thursday at home against Florida.

"Everybody's playing their teams at the end because you want to get into game shape and ready to play," coach Dean Evason said. "Hockey's a tough game to just practice and then jump into regular season. So we need reps, and obviously injuries happen. We just hope no more do."

The Wild's manpower is at the minimum.

After cutting their training camp numbers to just NHLers earlier in the week, the Wild were left with 21 players. The limit is 23 but by carrying fewer, the Wild can accrue much-needed salary cap space to give them more roster flexibility as the season progresses.

As it stands now, they don't even have enough cap room to recall certain players from the minors.

With Spurgeon out, the team still has enough players at each position — two goalies, six defensemen and 12 forwards — but the Wild could be in a bind down the road if there's more subtraction.

They could remove an injured player's cap hit from their books if that player goes on long-term injured reserve, but that player would have to be idle for 10 games and 24 days; that timeline makes Spurgeon an unlikely candidate.

If the Wild do need a call-up from Iowa in the American Hockey League at some point and don't have the cap space to bring up a reinforcement, they'd have to play one game down a player before being able to make an addition.

These aren't typical circumstances, operating without reserves, but it's a situation indicative of the cap crunch the Wild are dealing with while the Zach Parise and Ryan Suter buyouts eat up almost $15 million of their budget.

"We play 20 guys on a given night, so if there's two guys sitting in the dressing room or if there's two guys sitting in Iowa, what's the difference?" Evason said. "If we need somebody, we can go get somebody."

In and out of the lineup all last season, Goligoski was a healthy scratch come playoff time.

Same with Calen Addison, and Jon Merrill was also an onlooker for four of the six games against the Stars.

Now the trio comprises half the Wild's defense, and Evason said the team is comfortable with all three defenders.

Last season, Spurgeon had 11 goals and 23 assists in 79 games while being a team-high +32 and averaging nearly 22 minutes of ice time.

As for the power play, which featured Spurgeon on the second unit, the Wild could have either Jonas Brodin or rookie Brock Faber step into that role.

"We want Spurge to get back and get healthy and until then, we've got to find our way without him," Goligoski said. "So, excited for the opportunity, and hopefully we can get off to a good start here."