The Minnesota Wild are trying to stay afloat near the top of the West, a mission that will be easier if Kirill Kaprizov and Jared Spurgeon return Thursday, as expected.

And the clearest signal that Kaprizov and Spurgeon would be back is that the Wild reassigned defenseman David Jiricek two hours after practice. If you did the salary cap math, it really was the only option to get below the cap ceiling once Kaprizov is activated from LTIR.