Wild Clear Two Roster Spots As Brock Faber Closes In On Season Debut

The Minnesota Wild have spent six weeks proving they do not need Brock Faber. On Monday they started making room for him anyway. The Wild placed defenseman Cameron Crotty and forward Tyler Pitlick on waivers for the purpose of assignment to Iowa.

Neither move says much about either player. Both say plenty about the arithmetic facing Bill Guerin. Minnesota is carrying a full 23-man roster and sitting hard against the $104 million ceiling, and Faber counts $8.5 million against it. Something had to give.

A Long Road Back From A Fractured Skull

Faber has not played a regular-season game this season. He took a shot to the side of the head in the preseason finale against Dallas in late September, fractured his skull, and had surgery two days later. He cleared the NHL's return-to-play protocol on Oct. 29, got back on the ice last week, and practiced with the group Thursday.

He is traveling on this three-game trip through Montreal, Toronto, and Boston. When he is ready, the plan is to put him back alongside Quinn Hughes on the top pair, the duo Minnesota is expected to open the season with.

John Hynes stopped short of naming a date. The roster is telling a clearer story than the coach is. Teams do not open two spots for a player who is weeks away.

The Wild Did Not Wait For Him

What Faber comes back to is not the team that lost him. Minnesota is 12-3-4, second in the league, with points in eight straight games. Kirill Kaprizov has 16 goals and 15 assists in 19 games. Friday's 4-1 win over San Jose made the Wild the fastest franchise in league history to reach 1,000 regular-season wins, clearing a mark Philadelphia set in 2,018 games.

They have done it without either of their highest-paid right-shot defensemen. Captain Jared Spurgeon, who slid up alongside Hughes when Faber went down, has missed the last seven games with a lower-body injury. Filip Gustavsson has been out since September with a hip problem.

Pitlick Pays For The Good News

Pitlick is the casualty here. The 35-year-old got into 12 games because the injuries left Minnesota short, averaged 7:39 a night, and did not record a point. Crotty never got in at all.

The Wild claimed him off waivers from Ottawa on Oct. 29, his second stint with the organization, after he played three of the Senators' first 13 games. If Ottawa claims him back, the Senators can send him to Belleville without waiving him again.

Both would join an Iowa club sitting third in the AHL's Central Division at 6-6-2-1. Michael McCarron, who missed Saturday's overtime loss to Tampa Bay with an upper-body injury, practiced Monday and is expected to play in Montreal.