The Wild on Saturday took another step closer to finalizing their roster for the start of the NHL regular season, assigning defenseman Daemon Hunt to Iowa and placing forward Ben Jones on waivers to get him to the American Hockey League.
Wild trim roster by two with regular season approaching
Daemon Hunt was assigned to Iowa and Ben Jones was placed on waivers, leaving the Wild roster at 27 with four of those players injured.
The Minnesota Star Tribune
October 5, 2024 at 7:42PM
The two moves leave 27 players on the training camp roster, but with four players injured — Graeme Clarke, Luke Toporowski, Michael Milne and Troy Grosenick — the team effectively is at the 23-player limit. However, the Wild might go below that limit to 21 or 22 since they open the season with two games at home and won’t need so many extra players while at Xcel Energy Center.
The 22-year-old Hunt, a third-round draft pick in 2020, has played 110 games with Iowa the past two seasons and made his NHL debut last season, getting into 12 games overall. Jones, 25, signed with the Wild as a free agent in July from the Flames organization and has played in two NHL games with the Golden Knights, the organization that drafted him.
The Wild closed out the preseason with a 6-1 victory at Chicago on Friday night. They open the regular season Thursday against Columbus.
The Wild scored two goals late in the third period to tie the score against the Flames, completing a 2-0-1 road trip even though Kirill Kaprizov didn’t dress.
