Article: The Wild Dodged A Bullet With Jared Spurgeron's Injury

[Robert Brent]

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[Citizen Strife]

Fuck that goon.  Spurgeon was still playing high end hockey.

[Enforceror]

Spurgeon brings more than what meets the eye. Hes a clutch stud, defensive wizard and impactful to the entire team with his leadership. Those who who want to trade him need to take a second look 

[Imyourhuckleberry]

Luckily, Middleton's return from the broken finger is imminent. Hynes wasn't sure if it would be the next game, but Middleton is very close to coming back.

Hopefully Spurgeon heals up well and the Wild can close the season strong.

It would be really nice if the Wild could go into the playoffs this time not having key players missing or a shell of themselves due to injuries sustained.

[Patrick]

If Spurgeon was 4 Inches taller and everything else was identical he would be considered one of the best in the game. The people obsessed with size over results are pretty weird.

[mnfaninnc]

7 minutes ago, Patrick said:

If Spurgeon was 4 Inches taller and everything else was identical he would be considered one of the best in the game. The people obsessed with size over results are pretty weird.

I think you also missed 30 lbs. heavier.

[mnfaninnc]

Counterpoint- While this was a nice article about how much Tank has given the Wild over the years, we also need to veer towards right now. I don't wish injury on anyone, however, had Spurgy been out until about playoff time, that $7.5m in cap space could have added a guy like Forsberg immediately, and we backfill the defensive spot with Lambos/Jiricek. Both of those guys need NHL minutes too. 

We likely don't get as good a performance out of the 2 D players, but it is offset by Forsberg's offense which gets us a much better player for the playoffs. Anyone remember when Patrick Kane went down, had to go on LTIR and was ready to go, conveniently, just before the playoffs began. In fact, they held him out a few games to be cap compliant. This would be the blueprint for the TBL/VGK method of having Kucherov/Stone suddenly eat from the tree of health just before playoff time. 

While we have cap constraints on us for the year, freeing up half of that and being able to resign/continue with the player when cap frees up next season would have really helped our chances this year. 

If Jiricek or Lambos or Buium panned out immediately, we could bump Spurgeon down the lineup even further come playoff time. Say what you'd like about what Spurgeon has meant to the club in the regular season, and it's been really positive, in the playoffs, the stats bare out that he struggles and the team struggles. Having the luxury of a Spurgy on the 2nd or 3rd pairing, though, would mean a lot, I think. 

The argument here is that Spurgy would give us a good 2nd half boost of play in the defensive spot (and who knows about other injuries). But, again, this is regular season. We've banked enough points for a slight downgrade at that position followed by a boost in the L2W category currently being held down by Marcus Johansson. This is not a high bar to really improve, and it improves us in our main weakness. 

I realize this will likely be an unpopular take, but sometimes deep playoff runs are due to timing, and having a timing issue here to our favor, giving the replacement player plenty of time to build chemistry and then getting the other highly paid player back for the playoffs is exactly how 3 teams have won Stanley Cups (at least 3). 

Now with the good news of Spurgy only being out 2-3 weeks, this opportunity has passed us by. The bullet we dodged might have been the exact one we needed to take.