The NHL regular season gets underway on Tuesday evening, but the Minnesota Wild have already suffered a massive loss.
News broke on Tuesday that defenseman Brock Faber is out indefinitely after getting hit in the head with a puck in the team's preseason finale.
The Wild hosted the Dallas Stars on Friday night in their final tune-up before starting their regular season on Thursday against the Nashville Predators .
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The Stars won 2-1, but the big story was a scary moment in which a shot from Dallas' Miro Heiskanen hit Faber in the head.
It didn't look good. Wild GM Bill Guerin revealed that Faber suffered a fracture to his skull and underwent surgery over the weekend.
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Thankfully, Guerin reported that the 24-year-old Minnesota native and Team USA Olympic gold medalist is doing well after the successful surgery.
However, there's no timetable for his return to action, which is a huge loss for the Wild.
Faber is part of Minnesota's all-American top defense pair along with Quinn Hughes. The two are key pieces for the team, logging lots of ice time, driving play, and generating points. That extends to the special teams as well, where each of them quarterbacks one of the team's two power-play units.
Jared Spurgeon is expected to take on both of those responsibilities, and while he's a very solid veteran player, he's not going to put up numbers or generate offense the way Faber did last season.
Minnesota made the playoffs last season and will expect to do the same, if not become more of a Stanley Cup contender, and that will be harder to do with Faber sidelined.
Last season, the Wild finished third in a strong Central Division behind the Stars and Colorado Avalanche , the latter of which eliminated them in the second round.