PHILADELPHIA – Young defensemen still learning their way in professional hockey need to play. Watching NHL games from the pressbox in a nice suit generally does nothing to help grow their game. That’s why the Minnesota Wild sent project David Jiricek down to Iowa last week, after he’d played in their season-opener at St. Louis, then had been a healthy scratch for three games at the NHL level.

But injuries are seemingly inevitable when you play defense at this level, and Jiricek’s stay in the land of Cyclones and Hawkeyes proved to be brief. On Saturday, prior to their road meeting with the Flyers, Wild general manager Bill Guerin got Jiricek on a plane from Charlotte – where Iowa had a road game on Saturday – to Philadelphia and the 21-year-old Czech was back on Minnesota’s blue line at X

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