Wild Injury Concerns

Things have been far from good in Minnesota these last few days. Injury problems have compounded during the week and the first half of the weekend and now they have been officially eliminated from playoff contention, so I can forgive them if they were feeling a tad downtrodden for the next week or so.

First of all, they received news that Nick Schultz would not be back again this season after suffering a concussion this week. Schultz had been missing some time of late, but I was unaware of it being because of a concussion until recently, so that was pretty bad news for one of their good stay-at-home defensemen.

Marek Zidlicky was not able to dress on Saturday against the Lightning, because of an undisclosed injury, which has not been officially related to the hamstring problem he was dealing with not long ago, but no new reports are out there to suggest otherwise. He's considered day-to-day and won't likely be rushed back.

In Saturday's contest against the Lightning, the Wild lost both Martin Havlat and John Madden to injury, decimating their line-up even further. Havlat suffered an undisclosed injury, likely after getting run over by a clean check from Mattias Ohlund, while Madden suffered a lower-body injury, not sure how, but he won't be available to the Wild on Sunday either.

There are equal portions of offense and defense being lost to the Wild at the moment, but now that they are not in the race any more, they'll likely be able to coast down the stretch and début a few new faces in their line-up, getting a jump on training camp next year.

Yes, there are a few pool concerns here in this post and one of them actually has play on the money spots as well for this week.  Havlat belongs to the 2nd place team that belongs to the duo of Kristy and Don.  Now, they do seemingly have a safe 15-point lead for 2nd place going into the week, but an injury is still an injury and could make this race a bit closer.  Also, Zidlicky belongs to Derek W. this year and he's trying to stay out of 20th place, carrying a 9-point lead over the bottom spot in the standings going into Sunday's action.  How much significance will this injury have on the race for the basement dweller?

Link to the Injury/News Page