Going into Minnesota Wild training camp defensemen Mike Reilly had a huge chance to make the opening day roster. Unfortunately, while his play might be just good enough other factors might keep him down in Iowa to start the season.
One of the universally agreed truths about the Minnesota Wild roster is that the defensemen are the strongest group by far. Currently the Wild have what we all like to call a “good” problem, they seemed to almost have too many defensemen to fill out their NHL roster. The waiting to take the place of the current NHL defenders is a growing stable in Iowa who are growing more ready every day.
A big question to resolve by the end of this training camp is if one of those defenders Mike Reilly is finally ready for full-time NHL action? Heading into camp it was largely thought that Reilly could be ready. Last season he played 29 games in the NHL and seemed to learn a ton in the AHL with Iowa finishing as the team’s leading scoring defenseman. Sounds like someone who might be ready to make the jump to the NHL right?
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The test for Reilly to prove if he was ready for the NHL was his performance in training camp. With only one more preseason game to be played Saturday, it’s still unclear if Reilly has earned his way onto the NHL roster of the Wild.
His body of work in preseason games has been a mixed bag. In his first game against the Sabres in State College he tallied and assist on Jason Zucker’s game winning goal and looked strong moving the puck.
But then in his next contest against the Avs he finished minus one with no points and was not crisp in his passing. Bruce Boudreau described Mike Reilly’s play in that game to Michael Russo by saying “I think there’s a lot more to give from him. But you can see the skill right off the bat, the jumping into the play, he reads the play.” That seems to suggest that the Wild bench boss thinks he’s got something else in the tank.
In Winnipeg Reilly again looked a bit off in the Wild’s 4-1 loss to the Jets. He did tally another assist on Dumba’s power play goal, but he like most of the Wild defense got torched and fell victim to sloppy play. Last night in Colorado Reilly looked good, but didn’t record any points.
So looking at it from a game performance standpoint, has Reilly played well enough to make the roster? Actually maybe he did. With some of the flashes of talent and the two assists notched that certainly beats the results thus far of some of his defensive colleagues. But the problem for Reilly is that with the roster sacrifices that need to be made to keep him up with Minnesota to start the season, he had to make a stronger case than just two assists and half good/half bad play.
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If the Wild want to break camp with the Reilly on the Minnesota roster they’d have to possibly risk placing Nate Prosser or Christian Folin on waivers. To keep their defensemen numbers to the normal seven defenders that the team normally keeps, the Wild were willing to risk possibly losing Prosser or Folin to another team, granted that Reilly’s play warranted.
Now, as pointed out by Russo, the injury to Victor Bartley negates the Wild’s insurance policy against losing Prosser or Folin. And if they lose either defender in waivers the Wild will be in a bad place as far as their NHL ready defensive depth chart. The Wild could keep all three players Folin, Prosser, and Reilly up to negate the waiver issue but that’s a strain with the roster numbers and could rob Reilly of valuable playing time.
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The Wild could be more apt to take a risk with keeping Reilly up if he had gone out and unquestionably played his way onto the roster, but he really didn’t do that. Like I said before he might have played well enough to make the roster under normal circumstances, but these are not normal circumstances. My feeling is this week in practice will be big for him and he’ll see game time on Saturday to see if he’s indeed going to make the roster. He can do it for sure, he’s just got to go after it hard these next couple of days. But on the other hand the deck might be too stacked against him. Bottom line, he could go either way.