Wild lifer Jared Spurgeon eager to get back into games — and the playoffs — after torturous lost season

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."

Danielle, who began dating her high school sweetheart as a teenager, remembers after one game in December when her husband returned home as despondent as she'd ever seen him.

"He felt his body was betraying him," Danielle said. "He was just so mad. He described it as his leg and foot not really doing what he wanted it to do. So he'd pivot and would expect his body to do what it should, and it wouldn't. Or he'd put himself in a weird, vulnerable position because he was doing different movements to compensate or to relieve the pain.

"It just wasn't going away and it seemed to be getting worse."

If Spurgeon took a car ride for more than 10 minutes, he'd go numb. If he bent down to untie his kids' skates, his back would lock up and it would take him "forever" to get back up.

He was not in a good place mentally.

This was agony for a perfectly fit athlete — somebody used to being a reliable NHL player, being active in his kids' lives, playing with and picking up his three rescue dogs (70 to 125 pounds).

Finally, after several frustrating weeks and months of seeing different doctors and getting treatments and injections that provided some relief but were Band-Aids atop a gunshot wound, Spurgeon finally exclaimed, "I can't play like this. I'm not helping the team. There's no point anymore. I'm more of a liability than anything."

He opted to go under the knife ... twice.

Nobody looks forward to that, but for Spurgeon, there was a weight lifted off his shoulders. He was taking action to get healthy and pain-free again.

The hip surgery required a month on crutches. As his wife says, Spurgeon is such a "freak of nature" that he was off the crutches in two weeks and was told his range of motion was unheard of for somebody in that stage.

"He progressed so quickly, but those first couple days were hell," Danielle said, laughing. "My mom flew in for that one. The problem with Jared is he doesn't sit. Like he will not watch anyone do anything for him and the kids. He wants to do everything. So I told him, 'You are so annoying right now, just go sit down. That's it. Just go sit. We're all fine.'"

"But he would not do it. So it almost felt like you were constantly forcing him to sit or go lay down. I'm like, 'Relax!'"

Spurgeon, 34, laughs when thinking about what his wife and four kids, ages 14 to 5, had to endure.

"I give them a lot of credit because I wasn't the happiest person all the time," Spurgeon said.

Months after the surgeries — after staying in Minnesota all summer rather than returning to the family's offseason lake home outside Edmonton — Spurgeon will be on the ice Thursday when the Wild open training camp.

Having rehabbed and skated four days a week since the spring, he is convinced that last season's ordeal is behind him and he'll return to being the same ol' Spurge — the guy who has the third-most assists (274) in Wild history, is their all-time record-holder for defensemen with 110 goals and 384 points and is 443 minutes from passing Mikko Koivu's team record of 19,718.

He's in good spirits, even when talking about the recent loss of his beloved, "Lady J."

Just 10 days after celebrating her 100th birthday, Spurgeon's grandmother, Joyce, died Sept. 2.

When the grandparents would babysit Spurgeon and his brother, Tyler, when they were kids, Joyce would throw on the goalie pads and fend off balls and pucks from the boys in her basement.

Joyce treated all of Jared's friends like her own grandkids, especially his childhood best friend, Tyler Ennis, the former Wild center who retired from hockey Tuesday.

"Her and my grandpa, Paul, were the ones that had the season tickets to the Oilers and would divvy them up between the grandkids, and you'd get to go to one or two games a year, and that's really where my love for hockey began, was going to the Oilers games with them," Spurgeon said. "To make it to 100 and be living on your own for the most part was pretty spectacular."

Joyce would watch every Wild game. One of her greatest joys was watching Jared play games in Edmonton. She stopped coming to games in recent years because of how loud it was and all the commotion, but in 2020 when Spurgeon scored a dream-come-true natural hat trick during the Wild's father-son trip at Rogers Place, Spurgeon immediately heard from his elated, then-96-year-old grandmother.

Spurgeon was so close with his grandparents, when he began dating Danielle at age 16, one of their first dates started at their house.

"I remember it was a Friday night and we were going to hang out, and he said, 'Let's go to my grandma's house first,'" Danielle said, laughing. "I was like, 'Pardon?' But we would always go over to his grandma and grandpa's with a group of friends, and she'd make us food and snacks, and we'd go and hang out in the basement and play pool.

"At first, I was thrown. I never did that before. But we used to hang out there all the time. Like, all the time. And after Paul died, every Sunday she hosted dinner still. And during their offseasons after they turned pro, after Jared and his brother would work out, they'd go over to her house every day on their own to have lunch with her. It was very, very sweet. He loved her very much."

Hockey is Spurgeon's job and livelihood, but his family is his life and he's looking forward to a more normal existence now that he's healthy.

His oldest child, Zach, just started high school and is trying out for the Edina hockey team. He's almost as tall as Spurgeon and his feet are bigger. His youngest child, Myer, is 5 and just started kindergarten, so the Spurgeons are finally out of the baby phase. Colbie is 10 and Jayce is 7.

"It's crazy how time flies," Spurgeon said. "It's been a busy summer of kid's sports."

And of course, there are the three dogs. The family has a close relationship with the Bond Between, which used to be Secondhand Hounds, and has fostered many dogs over the years that have been locked away in shelters or in bad situations.

"I was a kid that always wanted a dog growing up for Christmas," he said. "That was my dream, getting a dog for Christmas, but we didn't get a dog until we were older and moving out for junior hockey. And so once we were here and married and had our own place, we had Bernese Mountain Dog for our first family dog, and then unfortunately, he passed away pretty young.

"After that, we were just set on rescuing others. All the kids love them."

Their newest dog is 125-pound Simon, a St. Bernard. The injured dog was being fostered but was quickly brought back to the shelter, which needed someone to nurse him back to health before it could put him on the website for adoption.

The Spurgeons volunteered.

Since last Christmas, Simon had two knee surgeries and a facelift, so he rehabbed with Spurgeon. He turned out to be so easy and such good friends with their other giant dogs, Cohen and Teddy, that the Spurgeons adopted him themselves.

"I think it was part of Danielle's plan," Spurgeon joked. "I think if she could, she would have 100 dogs."

Spurgeon's been wanting to pick up Simon since they got him, and once he got cleared by his doctors, he finally scooped him up for a photo.

Life is getting back to normal. And Spurgeon is ready for the same on the ice.

Last March, Zach was playing a AA Bantam state tournament in Grand Rapids, Minn. Spurgeon has never been able to attend his kids' out-of-town tournaments during hockey season, but the Wild gave the injured captain permission to attend.

The first night, he went to a sports bar to pick up dinner for the family. The Wild were playing on TV.

It was so weird and everybody at that bar looked at Spurgeon confused as to why the heck he was in town during a Wild game.

The next night, the Spurgeons returned to the bar for bingo night.

Spurgeon won two games, and the packed bar of patrons raucously cheered each time he showed off his prowess by screaming, "Bingo!"

As word got out during the four hours that Spurgeon was there, residents would arrive with jerseys to sign.

"It was just such a weird season," Danielle said. "When you're hurt, you're not really part of it anymore. You're really out of the loop. Even for me, I didn't even know when road trips were anymore, so I felt disconnected, too. I'd be talking to the girls about something and they'd be like, 'Well, no, the guys are gone.' It was a very odd season that way."

Spurgeon would watch every home game from the press box, but when you're not going through the battle with your teammates, it's awkward to go into the locker room, even as captain, and give pep talks.

"You'd try and have little conversations with the guys, just to ask what they were seeing, what the feel in the room was and try and bring some energy that way, but it is hard because you're not in the game," Spurgeon said. "It was definitely, definitely hard, but I tried my best to always be around if guys wanted to talk or to tell them what I've been seeing, if they had any questions, and just try and keep positivity in there."

He's done all he could to make sure he can be more hands-on this season. Rehab was grueling, working to regain his mobility and strength, especially in his operated-on hip. He skated first on his own, then with skills and skating coach Andy Ness, "just relearning techniques and just getting back on the edges and stuff like that. You're pretty much working to reteach yourself to skate," Spurgeon said.

The numbness is gone. He still gets some burning sensations, but doctors tell him that's normal as nerves regenerate.

Calder Trophy runner-up Brock Faber said Spurgeon was "flying" during captain's practices in the weeks leading up to camp.

"People don't really understand how good Spurge is, I feel like, and what it did to us last season not having him in the lineup," Faber said. "Having him in the lineup makes a world of a difference for the whole entire team, not even leadership-wise, just like the player he is. He's that good, and he affects the game a ton.

"I'll be honest: We were all worried about him last year. He kept it out of the room, from me at least. But when you hear about numbness and the pain he was in, that's scary. Outside of hockey, that's scary. So having him back is gonna be awesome."

Spurgeon admitted that he thought he was closer than he was earlier this summer until players like Matt Boldy returned from the World Championship. He started skating with teammates who were still playing at a higher pace and thought, "Maybe I'm not as close as I thought."

"But the last month, it's been a lot better," he said. "And now it's just continually progressing to hit those little checkpoints so that we can keep pushing it to go farther and farther so that we're ready for the season."

Spurgeon, too, is interested to see if he's the same old Spurgeon.

His role may change a bit. For one, Jonas Brodin and Faber will likely be considered the first pair with Jake Middleton and Spurgeon manning the second pair. But that could be a good thing if John Hynes can lessen the load on Faber, who logged the sixth-most ice time in the NHL last season, and Brodin.

And with Faber and Declan Chisholm likely occupying spots on the Nos. 1 and 2 power plays, Spurgeon knows he could mostly see penalty kill time this season as the Wild attempt to shore up last season's biggest weakness.

"It doesn't really matter where I'm at," Spurgeon said. "As long as we're winning, I could be playing PK only and I'll be happy with that and take pride in that."

Spurgeon just wants to help the Wild get back into the playoffs and beyond the first round for the first time since 2015.

"Missing the playoffs is obviously something you never want to do, and the first-round thing is the first-round thing," Spurgeon said. "We f—ing hate it as much as everyone else does, and it's so hard to win in the league now. The teams are so good and everyone's so close that you've just got to be the team that's playing the best at the right time and also be consistent.

"But for us, I think it's imperative just to prove to ourselves and to everyone that last year was a one-off and that we can be that team that we're expected to be and get to where we want to be. Obviously, we put a lot of pressure on ourselves, as well, in that room to get to where we want to be, which is at the end, being the last team standing. At the same time, you can't be looking ahead to the end of the season. We've got to start with the start of the year and get it off to a better start."

(Top photo: Mark Blinch / )