The Minnesota Wild are coming into the 2020-21 season with a relatively low bar of expectations set, at least from an external perspective. There is still plenty of room, however, for the Wild to emerge from the Honda West Division in a top four spot, which would earn the club a berth in the 2020-21 Stanley Cup Playoffs.
Though there's no guarantee that 2020 1st round pick Marco Rossi would have made the cut for the main roster in Minnesota, his presence as a dynamic goal-scoring center, a position of which the Wild are in short supply, made it far more likely that he would have made the cut than not - especially after leading the entire OHL with 120 points in 56 games last season with the Ottawa 67's.
Unfortunately for both Rossi and the Wild, the 19-year-old Austrian is out indefinitely with an upper-body injury, per the Wild's official Twitter account.
Some were of the mindset that the 9th overall pick in 2020 could have made a push for the Calder Trophy had he made the team out of training camp.
Though we do not yet know the extent or the specifics of Rossi's injury, the "indefinite" label certainly makes it sound at least semi-serious, which could potentially hurt his chances of playing in the NHL this season.
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