ST. PAUL, Minn. — It’s been nearly 14 years since Jared Spurgeon made his NHL debut on his 21st birthday, but the Wild captain and his wife, Danielle, haven’t forgotten how hard training camp can be for a player on a two-way contract.
These players, and in some cases their families, will arrive in town weeks before camp and could be living in a hotel for upwards of a month.
So last weekend, after years of hosting Halloween, New Year’s and Super Bowl parties and Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners for teammates, the always-welcoming Spurgeons invited the entire team to dinner at their home in Edina, including roster hopefuls and potential minor-leaguers.
At the end of a night in which Jared and Danielle entertained more than two dozen people, there was one couple Danielle really fell for — a free agent pickup named Reese Johnson, who has 141 games under his belt with the Chicago Blackhawks, and his new wife, Tyler.
“They left, and I was telling Jared how I really enjoyed Reese and his wife,” Danielle said, laughing. “I was talking to Jared about how great they were, and Jared laughed and goes, ‘That’s the guy who actually hurt me in the preseason.’
“I go, ‘Oh, that’s so funny. I didn’t know that. But anyway, love them!’ I mean, as Jared even said, ‘Who cares?’ No one means to hurt each other.”
That shoulder injury, sustained in Minnesota’s final road exhibition game last year, was a real bummer for Spurgeon. Nobody wants to get hurt on the eve of the season, and Spurgeon was anticipating a fresh start after a long offseason and the buildup of a full training camp.
Instead, the injury knocked him out of the Wild’s lineup for the first month of the season — kicking off a lost season full of injuries and setbacks.
Spurgeon was limited to 16 games, and the Wild missed the playoffs for only the second time since 2012. He ultimately underwent hip and back surgeries a month apart after enduring pain and numbness in one of his legs and feet throughout the season.
“It got really bad, to the point where my toe and everything would be fully numb whenever I’d get into physical activity,” Spurgeon said. “You start toe-picking. It got to the point where during games, in between shifts, I would untie my skates to try and see if that would give it relief and make it go away. But it never did.”
