Wild reassign Kyle Rau to Iowa

The Minnesota Wild have reassigned depth forward Kyle Rau to the AHL Iowa Wild on Friday morning, cutting down their roster to 22 players with no player coming back up.

With one below the 23-man limit, the Wild give themselves some cap relief for their upcoming homestand. After they face the Seattle Kraken in their brand-spankin’ new arena on Saturday, Minnesota is heading back to St. Paul and will be hosting both the San Jose Sharks and the Dallas Stars next week, before heading down to Florida. With that little homecoming, they can afford to have a shortened roster and less of a risk with injuries; especially considering that the AHL Wild are going to be only playing home games until Nov. 27.

Whether this is to give Rau — who has been a healthy scratch for the last three matches — some AHL game-time, or to slowly accumulate some cap space, as Rau’s daily cap hit is $3,750, giving the Wild just some very minor potential deadline cap room (about $26,250 if he remains in the AHL until the Wild head on their southern road trip); this can only bring positives for both player and club.

Rau has zero points in the three games he’s played this season, and with Jordan Greenway back from injury and Rem Pitlick more or less cementing his position in the bottom-six forward group, there isn’t really a need for him to hang around and hope for some minutes.