Iowa Wild Sign Joe Stejskal

The Iowa Wild announced Friday that they have signed defenseman Joe Stejskal of the Gwinnett Galdiators in the ECHL to a professional tryout (PTO).

The 26-year-old Grand Rapids, MN-native was a 2007 fifth round draft pick by the Montreal Canadiens and spent two full seasons playing for the Hamilton Bulldogs in the AHL after finishing a four year career at Cartmouth College. He has spent the last two seasons in the ECHL playing for the Florida Everblades last season, before moving on to the Gladiators this year. He previously joined the Wild for training camp in 2014.

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This season Stejskal leads the Gladiators in plus/minus with a plus-10 rating and has accumulated four goals and 16 assists through 43 games to rank fourth on the Galdiators in points. That’s a pretty good step up from last season with Florida where he scored three goals and 16 assists through 65 games.

It looks like the last place Wild are looking to give some players a chance to take a spot on the team, in hopes of getting something going. In recent weeks they’ve recalled former second round draft pick Raphael Bussieres from Alaska, signed veteran Ruslan Fedotenko (who is now injured), and then this week they recalled forwards Olivier Archambault and Ryan Walters from Alaska and signed forward Joe Perry to a PTO. Perry and Walters both played in Friday’s win over the Hamilton Bulldogs. (Can we refer to them as Walter & Perry as though they’re a little unit like Water and Perry from Home Movies?)

Iowa continues their current roadtrip with an afternoon game against the Toronto Marlies on Saturday.