Injuries force Wild to juggle lineup in advance of Canucks visit

It is a common refrain in sports for first-place teams to thank their good health for helping them get to the top and stay there. Off to their best start in franchise history, the Minnesota Wild have not needed that advantage.

Before the team took the ice for Tuesday night’s showdown with the Canucks, Wild management made a few of their health issues NHL official, placing forward Mats Zuccarello on the long term injured reserve list and adding forward Jakub Lauko and defenseman Jonas Brodin to the injured reserve roster.

That news is least serious for Lauko, who missed his fourth consecutive game on Tuesday while dealing with a lower body injury but is the closest to returning among the players currently unavailable.

Meeting with reporters following the Wild’s lightly attended optional morning skate Tuesday, coach John Hynes classified Lauko as day to day and said the Czech forward can come off the IR list at any time. The timeline for Brodin, who has an upper body injury, is less clear.

“I’ll probably have more information in a few days,” Hynes said of Brodin, who has now missed six games this season. “He’s seeing some doctors and getting a feel of where he’s at, but I don’t have an exact timeline on him yet.”

For Zuccarello, the move to long term injured reserve gives general manager Bill Guerin some salary cap flexibility. Injured in a Nov. 14 win over Montreal in St. Paul, Zuccarello had surgery after getting hit below the belt by a shot fired by a teammate, and the Wild are being patient with his road back.

“He’s doing some light activity. He has increased from basically doing nothing to now he’s doing some light stuff, using the gym,” Hynes said. “I think it’s going to be now, say, this week getting into the activity and getting himself moving around again. And then I think next week we might have a better feel on if we’re going to advance that to on the ice, and there will be a whole process with that as well.”

Forwards Joel Eriksson Ek and Marcus Johannson missed practice on Monday for what the coach called “maintenance,” but both were on the ice and ready to go Tuesday versus Vancouver.

The Wild also added two players from their Iowa AHL affiliate, calling up forward Liam Ohgren and goalie Jesper Wallstedt. Ohgren, their 2022 first round draft pick, has skated in eight NHL games this season without recording a point. Wallstedt is not expected to displace either Filip Gustavsson — scheduled to start against Vancouver — or Marc-Andre Fleury, and is more likely being recalled to get some work with the NHL team’s coaching staff.

All of those moves, plus the addition of defenseman David Jiricek via a trade last weekend, left Hynes with 13 healthy forwards and seven healthy defensemen from which to fill out his line chart Tuesday.

The Wild play their next three on the road, with games at Anaheim on Friday, at Los Angeles on Saturday and at Utah on Tuesday, Nov. 10.