The famous Bruce Boudreau skating test highlighted the first day of Wild camp.

Most of the Wild vets handled the annual event in stride, led by Matt Dumba, Charlie Coyle, Jason Zucker, Eric Staal, and Jared Spurgeon. Youngsters Joel Eriksson Ek and Jordan Greenway came to camp in great shape as they had no trouble passing the test with relative ease.

On the other side of the ledger was 1st year pro Dimitry Sokolov, who's conditioning has been the subject of concern ever since the Wild selected the talented forward in 2016.

Boudreau was encouraging Sokolov as he pushed through the final stretches of the test. When a player fails the test the penalty is two more solo runs which is a total of 5 lengths of the rink. Sokolov was spared the 2nd extra run as Boudreau did not want to embarrass Sokolov any further.

Matt Read and Matt Hendricks were the only other vets to fail the skating test, which for Read especially is alarming that his conditioning is not where it needs to be. That is rather disappointing for a player that is supposedly fighting for his NHL life.

Getting back to Sokolov, the hope is that he gets it and sees that in order to make it at the next level it boils down to a lot more than talent alone. Sokolov has skills the Wild desperately need, but it is up to him to understand that fact and make the necessary changes in order to compete at the highest level.

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