With injured players coming back into the Minnesota Wild lineup, someone had to lose a spot, and that player turned out to be Daemon Hunt. The team announced Tuesday that it has placed the defenseman on waivers.
If Hunt clears, the expectation is that Minnesota will send him to the AHL’s Iowa Wild. For now, he looks like the kind of depth defender a team can try to slip through without much trouble.
Hunt’s NHL resume is limited to Minnesota. The Wild took him 65th overall in the 2020 NHL Draft, and once he turned pro for the 2022-23 season, most of his time has been spent inside the organization.
His path has included a brief detour through Columbus. Early in the 2024-25 season, Minnesota sent Hunt to the Blue Jackets in the deal for David Jiříček.
He never reached the NHL with Columbus, instead spending that stretch with the AHL’s Cleveland Monsters, where he posted two goals and 14 points in 48 games with a -8 rating. Columbus re-signed him the next offseason, but the Wild brought him back by claiming him on waivers before the regular season.
Hunt then spent the full 2025-26 season in Minnesota in a comparable role, finishing with six assists in 32 games and a -3 rating while averaging 12:26 of ice time per game. This season, he has gone scoreless in 11 appearances and has averaged 14:08 per night. If he does end up in Iowa after clearing waivers, it would be his first AHL game since the 2024-25 season.
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The complication is obvious: any talk around Konecny comes with serious layers attached. His contract is heavy, and his no-movement protection gives him control over where this goes next, if it goes anywhere at all. For the Wild, the appeal is easy to understand, but so is the challenge, since getting a player of that caliber in the door would require much more than simple interest from both sides. [Read more 🡒]