John Torchetti Talks About the Plan for Josh Harding
When the Minnesota Wild put goaltender Josh Harding through waivers on November 17 there was a lot of speculation about the team’s plans for him. In fact, there was a lot of speculation for 24 hours on if the NHL’s top statistical netminder through December of last year would even clear waivers.
Harding cleared and it seemed like the plan for Harding was at least clarifying, with most speculating that he’d put in a good amount of time in Iowa and if his game was up to par after missing 11 months he might get a shot at coming back to the NHL level. Or at least the team would have a very solid third option if something should happen to Darcy Kuemper or Niklas Backstrom.
That plan may not have changed, but the timeline does appear to have and it’s becoming more clear why Wild GM Chuck Fletcher put Harding on waivers instead of placing Harding in Iowa on a conditioning stint, which has a maximum length of two weeks.
Eight days into his AHL adventure, Harding still hasn’t started a game for Iowa. It seemed a forgone conclusion that Harding would get a couple practices in and take a game for Iowa, especially after they sent John Curry to the Quad City Mallards of the ECHL just before Harding’s arrival in Des Moines.
But, before the three-game weekend was up, they’d recalled Curry from Quad City and gave him the start on Sunday against Milwaukee — in which he stopped 33 of 34 and collected the win. The team had Johan Gustafsson on the bench as the back-up, where Harding was at least given back-up duties to Gustafsson on Friday and Saturday.
Wednesday, Iowa Wild coach John Torchetti talked to Joe O’Donnell about Harding’s situation and why he won’t be starting for Iowa on Wednesday night. He said that Harding “just needs to feel comfortable” and that he’ll have “a hard off-ice workout” Wednesday night and they’d see how he feels.
Torchetti said they’d take a look at Harding again after Friday’s practice and they’d “maybe, maybe” talk about starting him in Sunday’s 4pm CST start against the San Antonio Rampage.
The lack of ice time doesn’t tilt their hand on what the future plans are for Harding, but it does look like he was further away from being ready to play in games than it seemed when the Wild placed him on waivers, with the team is talking about needing to get a good look at him after he does a hard off-ice workout. Maybe everyone jumped the gun a bit on how quickly Harding’s conditioning might be up after not starting a game since December 2013 and just recovering from a broken foot.
The good news is, there’s a chance we’ll get to see Harding playing in a Wild uniform again by Sunday.