Wilderness Walk: No Eriksson Ek, Spurgeon for Winter Classic

That’s Wild

• The year of 2021 is coming to an end and the Minnesota Wild have had a little bit of a hectic year. So let’s look back and determine who the top-five players were on this team of the calendar year. [Hockey Wilderness]
• We’re already one full day into the 2022 World Juniors, but it doesn’t hurt to get caught up on all the Wild prospects participating in this winter tournament in Edmonton. [Hockey Wilderness]
• The Wild’s next scheduled game is the 2022 Winter Classic on Jan. 1 against the St. Louis Blues and head coach Dean Evason confirmed on Sunday that the team will not have defenseman Jared Spurgeon or center Joel Eriksson Ek in its lineup. [The Athletic]

Off the trail...

• The NHL is bringing back taxi squads (and some other cap stuff) to try and have teams play through the recent outbreak of COVID. [NBC Sports]

• The IIHF has canceled all tournaments beginning in January and that includes the Women’s Under-18s, for the second year in a row with no true backup plan or look into playing it somewhere else at a different date. [Yahoo! Sports]