Jonas Brodin

Initially, uh, Thursday night in Nashville, Jared Spurgeon is gonna play with, uh, Quinn Hughes at even strength.

Uh, it looks like Ole Maatta and Jonas Brodin will be on the second pair, and that Taiman Hunt and, and, um, Zach Bogosian will be on the third pair.

Hunt and Bogosian will basically split the PK time that, that Faber, uh, usually gets, and Spurgeon will take the number two power play, uh, point position, which obviously, um, this is a guy that's, uh, the only point that he does-- The only record in Wild history amongst defensemen that Spurgeon doesn't own outright, that he's tied with Ryan Suter in, is power play points.

Everything else, he is the number one record holder for defensemen in Wild history.

Where do you think they go from here?

Well, I mean, you just laid out how they're gonna go at least for game one, and, you know, Spurgeon and Hughes are gonna be fine.

It's-- You probably feel the bigger hit on the second pair with Brodin and Maatta as opposed to Brodin and Spurgeon.

And, you know, I think we'll see how this goes.

The Wild were pretty lucky this past year as far as injuries are concerned.

You have to be able to... reasonably navigate the infirmary in order to have successful seasons.

And you've got guys on this roster that really have some extensive history, whether it be Jonas Brodine, whether it be Jared Spurgeon, whether it be Zach Bogosian.

Ole Mata's got some injuries in his past.

Quinn Hughes has been dinged up a couple of times.

You're going to have to lean on him.

You're going to have to lean on Quinn.

You're going to have to lean on Jared Spurgeon, Jonas Brodine, which, as I said in segment one, you're kind of opening them up then to potential injury risk.

Until then, at least for now, the top pair has been realigned to you playing with Quinn Hughes.

Uh, what's different for you? Playing with Jonas Brodin as your defensive partner compared to Quinn Hughes, how do things change for you in your role?

Uh, I think they're pretty similar.

Obviously, uh, Quinn's such a special player.

And but if you ...

Sometimes the Swedish guys, like Jonas Brodin, kind of the same thing, they'll refer to each other, and you'd swear it sounds like Yule and Yonas, like with a Y.

[laughs]

But they, when they say it to me how they want their name said, it sounds like, then they say-

We've got three or four different players talking about what makes Matt Boldy so special, and it isn't that we have to hit him up for it that morning because, hey, tonight we're talking about Matt Boldy, so we don't bother him.

And I was sitting with Joel Eriksson Ek, and I throw out Brodin, because I know the, the Swedes are all buddies and they hang out with each other.

And, and so I said, "What is, how about Jonas Brodin?" And he says, "Oh, Jonas is one of my best friends."

[laughs]

So you have a lot of areas that the Wilds are going to need to kind of spread out the responsibilities in order to mitigate not having Faber on the ice for opening night.

Now, as far as the on ice time is concerned, obviously Quinn Hughes is going to take a large amount of ice time himself.

And... we will see an uptick in, for sure, Jonas Brodine and Jared Spurgeon.

Those two will certainly take some of those minutes that are not going to be filled by Brock Faber.

They'll certainly be asked to fill a good amount of minutes between the two of them.

So I would guess that that will be what we see.

For the top pairing, what's going to be really interesting is what the second pairing looks like.

Who elevates with Jonas Brodine to fill that spot on the second pairing? You've got, obviously, Zach Bogosian.

Zach Bogosian will likely stay on the third.

We've seen Olli Maata on, you know, the recent practice lines go up to the second line pair with Jonas Brodin, and David Spachak jump in on line three, or on pairing three, with Zach Bogosian.

And kinda do like that, you know.

Get the kid some experience with a very good veteran in Zach Bogosian.

... uh, just 'cause, like, they do have, they, they, a sh- a couple guys showed up, uh, in the preseason defensively.

But Jonas Brodin-

Right

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