UPDATED
The Wild made five roster moves today by placing Jordan Schroeder and Pat Cannone on waivers and assigning Kurtis Gabriel, Gustav Olofsson and Zack Mitchell to Iowa.
Schroeder and Cannone will be assigned to Iowa on Tuesday when they clear.
That trims the roster to 33, although that's deceiving because it includes injuried Iowa guys Sam Anas, Max Fortunus, Dylan Labbe and Chase Lang.
Unfortunately, that now includes Victor Bartley, the defenseman signed to be Iowa's No. 1 defenseman and a guy who could fill in for Minnesota. He has had a great camp, but I hear he sustained a serious injury last night. Hopefully I get an update today.
Update: Brent Flahr says he has a torn triceps, and that will require surgery. He'll be out months, rather than weeks, Flahr said.
This is a significant organizational loss because now Gustav Olofsson will be the obvious guy to call up if there's injuries. If Mike Reilly earns a top 6 D spot now, it's riskier to put Christian Folin or Nate Prosser on waivers because the Wild can't afford to lose either due to depth. So, if Reilly deserves to be here, Wild may have to keep eight D. If Reilly doesn't earn a spot, he could go to Iowa and Folin and Prosser serve as Nos. 6 and 7 D.
Kurtis Gabriel's no longer in the big practice group, so my gut says he's on the verge of being assigned to Iowa.
The Wild's roster has to be down to 23 by Oct. 11.
Today's lines:
Nino Niederreiter is practicing for the first time and reunited with Erik Haula and Jason Pominville.
Eric Staal is centering Zach Parise and Charlie Coyle.
Mikko Koivu isn't practicing today (classy gesture, but Koivu and a handful of staff are attending the funeral of Mark Sickman, the dad of longtime Wild director of media relations, Aaron Sickman), so Joel Eriksson Ek is centering Mikael Granlund and Chris Stewart.
Jason Zucker is on the left side of Tyler Graovac and Alex Tuch.
Zac Dalpe is centering Ryan Carter and Christoph Bertschy.
Devan Dubnyk, Darcy Kuemper and Alex Stalock are all practicing, as are all eight defensemen.
Bruce Boudreau said everybody will go to Denver except Parise, Staal, Koivu, Granlund, Dubnyk, Ryan Suter and Jared Spurgeon.
I'll update blog in a bit with more from Boudreau, who as usual was a quote machine today.
Just a reminder, at 4 p.m. Wednesday, Jim Souhan and I will be taping our podcast at Hell's Kitchen in Minneapolis. Please come join.
Also, next Monday, please come on down for an exclusive Star Tribune preview to this season.
The event will be held at noon on Oct. 10 at the Cambria Gallery on 7th and will feature myself and Anthony LaPanta and Wes Walz from Fox Sports North.
Tickets to the Star Tribune's exclusive event are available now at www.startribune.com/mnwild and cost $10. Each guest will receive a free Russo's Rants T-shirt and bag of Drew's Caramel Corn. Only 100 seats for the conversation are available, so please act fast.
