Brock Faber set to return for Wild Saturday vs. Bruins

The word came from the beat on Wednesday morning, and it was the one Wild fans have been waiting on for 7 weeks.

Michael Russo

@RussoHockey

Brock Faber penciling in Saturday night return t.co/JCbfpKKgB5

Saturday is the final stop of Minnesota's 3-game road trip, a date with the Bruins in Boston. Faber is traveling with the team but is slated to sit out Thursday's game in Toronto, so the plan is a couple more days of work and then the real thing.

Remember how scary this was. Faber took a shot to the side of the helmet near his left ear hole in a September 25 preseason game against Dallas, his condition got worse, and he went to the hospital and had surgery on September 27 for a fractured skull. That is not a groin strain. Faber himself has said that if the puck had hit him a couple centimeters lower or a couple inches higher, the story is very different.

Daily Faceoff

@DailyFaceoff

Report: Wild’s Brock Faber expected to make season debut Saturday t.co/0LEZNd2Kwf

He has been checking boxes since. He cleared his return-to-play protocol in late October, got cleared by team doctors, and was back at practice on November 5. John Hynes said at the time that Faber still had to rebuild his strength and conditioning before he could play, and that is the last gap he is closing this week.

The wild part, no pun intended, is that Minnesota hasn't needed him to stay afloat. The Wild are 13-3-4, first in the Western Conference and tied with Carolina for the Presidents' Trophy lead, and they got there with captain Jared Spurgeon banged up too. Now they get back a guy who put up a career-high 51 points in 80 games last season and logged the 9th-most minutes of any player in the NHL.

That is the scary bit for the rest of the West. A team already at the top of the conference is about to add a 24-year-old No. 1 defenseman who eats minutes at both ends. He may take a game or 2 to shake off the rust after 7 weeks away, so watch his ice time in Boston. If Hynes lets him go 22-plus right away, he is all the way back.