It was announced today that Wild backup goalie, Alex Stalock will be out indefinitely due to an upper body injury. It was not made clear when the injury occurred.
Andrew Hammond was signed to a one-year, two-way contract ($700K/$200K) to provide veteran depth. Hammond you will recall was signed by former Wild GM, Paul Fenton back in the Summer of 2018 and played that season with the Iowa Wild.
With Stalock out, Kaapo Kahkonen, could have his opportunity to make the team when the season begins. It was thought that he would at least open the season in Iowa and if the newly acquired Cam Talbot and or Stalock stumbled then Kahkonen would get the call.
The Wild goaltending situation has been one of great focus for Bill Guerin as he openly stated that he was not pleased with how the Wild goalies performed this past season. He was not going to sit idly by without addressing this critical need.
He made the Talbot signing as the free agent window opened. The Talbot signing was met with some skepticism by many in the industry being that their were so many seemingly better options.
I believe that Guerin had the plan to upgrade the position by adding Talbot and signing him to a deal that will ultimately (after this season) be slightly lower than the $4M/year that they were paying Devan Dubnyk. As part of the Dubnyk trade to San Jose, the Wild will be retaining $2,166,666 of his contract this season.
The next dilemma that Guerin faces with his goalies, is the expansion draft where thw Wild will have three goalies under contract. The obvious choice will be to protect Kaapo Kahkonen and leave both Talbot and Stalock exposed.
Talbot will serve the Wild well in this transition phase but does not project to be a long term solution possibly despite the three-year contract he signed. ($3,666,667 AAV).
More to come as the season draws near...we hope.