Wild’s Sammy Walker Gets Call-Up With Alex Goligoski on LTIR

They were unable to call up another player due to a lack of salary cap space, but playing a man short would have allowed them to call up an emergency roster player making $875,000 or less; instead, they have elected the route of long-term injured reserve (LTIR) for Goligoski effectively giving them $1.95 million worth of cap space. They have already dipped into that new fund to bring Sammy Walker up to fill in the roster gap, but the LTIR move does have some downsides.

Cap Situation Breakdown

Since the Wild played their game against the Canadiens with just 11 forwards and six defensemen they would have been able to use an emergency recall to recall Walker from their American Hockey League (AHL) affiliated Iowa Wild whether they had the cap space or not. The emergency recall of a player has become a lot more frequent as the stagnant salary cap has many teams unable to carry an extra player on their roster, meaning even minor injury trouble can cause issues.

The Wild would have joined a list of teams that have already had to resort to those measures; until they put Goligoski on LTIR. As the team was approximately $43,000 under the salary cap before making the move, it leaves them with just under $1.95 million of space instead of Goligoski’s full $2 million salary. They have used that newly created room to recall Walker leaving them with $1,066,927 of cap space according to puckpedia.com.

LTIR Brings Good & Bad

The good news for the Wild is that they will now be able to bring up whichever players they see fit instead of having to resort to just the veteran players on league-minimum deals. That has opened the door for players like Walker, Adam Beckman, or Daemon Hunt who make more than the team could previously afford. It has also created enough space that if the injury bug continues to spread and the team needs to bring another player up, then they still have the previously quoted number of approximately $1.07 million they can use.

The major downside to this move is that the Wild are no longer able to accrue any cap space. On the opening day of the season, the team had about $818,000 worth of cap space. As the NHL’s salary cap is calculated per day, by staying at that number they could have slowly built up the total cap available to the team, day by day, eventually reaching the point where they would have had enough space to call up any player they wanted. Every day they spent with just their season-opening roster active gave them roughly an extra $4,000 of cap space to work with. They are now unable to accumulate any space until Goligoski is removed from LTIR.

Sammy Walker the Second-Line Winger

No matter what the situation will be in the future, Walker is likely going to be in the lineup for their next few games as the 24-year-old Minnesota native had a stellar preseason leading all the way back to the Tom Kurvers Prospect Showcase. Walker was a seventh-round pick of the Tampa Bay Lightning back in 2017 but ended up signing with the Wild after four years in the NCAA with the University of Minnesota.

Walker has immediately become one of their most NHL-ready prospects and even found himself in nine contests in the 2022-23 season during which he collected a goal and an assist, but more importantly, his speed made him one of the most noticeable players on the ice for all the right reasons. There is no questioning what Walker brings to a team as his speed and skill are on display every time he hits the ice. 

With Matt Boldy out of action, there is a good chance that Walker will join fellow speedster Marcus Johansson on the second line, a combination that has the potential to leave other teams in the dust as they try to contain the sheer velocity the pair could create. The other three lines have already built strong chemistry through the preseason and early regular season, so it is unlikely head coach Dean Evason will decide to break them up. Instead, Walker will get a great opportunity in an elevated role.

Seize the Opportunity

Walker has shown that he can create at the AHL level, and has had a brief glimpse at NHL-level opposition so he should be well aware of what it is going to take to get himself a full-time roster spot. The reality of the Wild’s current cap situation is that once they are fully healthy there will not be enough space for Walker, meaning he would have to be sent back down to the AHL. The only way he stays on the Wild’s roster past that point would be to play at the level where they have no choice but to waive or trade another player. It is unlikely, but not unheard of.