Hockey Wilderness · Jan 7, 2021
Uber-qualified: We project the Minnesota Wild’s taxi squad
Photo by Brian Babineau/NHLI via Getty ImagesIn the Wild days of yore, making a call-up from the American Hockey League required a long-distance phone call and booking a frantic flight from Houston so a roster replacement player could make the ice for game time in St. Paul. More recently, the distance was shortened by 935.5 miles as the Houston Aeros became the Iowa Wild, but a drive up from Des Moines still takes about three-and-a-half hours (not considering traffic) for an AHLer to make it by puck drop.
In 2021 and a pandemic-stricken world, the National Hockey League has made a last-second replacement as easy as calling back to the hotel.