Michael Russo's Sunday Insider: See you down the road

Jim Gehrz, Star Tribune

Colton Gillies played 45 games for the Wild last season. It might have been too much too soon.

Keeping Colton Gillies in Houston for a full season is the best thing the Wild can do for its former first-round draft pick.

By MICHAEL RUSSO, Star Tribune

Last update: November 29, 2009 - 12:25 AM

When Colton Gillies got the news that he didn't make the Wild out of training camp, the 20-year-old had to fight back tears.

"I was devastated," said Gillies, the 16th pick in 2007 who played 45 games with the Wild as a rookie last season. "It kind of felt like everything I did in the summer, and I worked so hard and I had all these goals, was for nothing.

"But once I actually got down here to Houston, I started to embrace it. I'm really enjoying myself and know it's for the best."

This is a development year for Gillies. As the Wild has shown throughout its slew of injuries, Gillies is in Houston to stay.

"I told him after camp, 'Don't sit by the phone whenever there's an injury and wait for a callup,'" Wild GM Chuck Fletcher said. "We don't want to just bring him up for a game here or two games there and send him down. We think mentally that would be even harder on him.

"The goal has been for him to go down there, get a lot of ice time, play special teams and play in a lot more situations than he could here at this stage of his career. When he comes back, we want him to have a real good chance to be here for the rest of his career."

Out of respect for former Wild GM Doug Risebrough and 21-year-old James Sheppard, nobody inside the Wild will say this: The Wild doesn't want Gillies following the path of Sheppard.

Like Gillies, Sheppard, the ninth overall pick in 2006, arrived in the NHL out of junior in 2007 at age 19. The Wild felt he'd develop better under Jacques Lemaire than in Cape Breton, and because he wasn't 20, he couldn't be sent to Houston.

But he could have been sent there last season, and the Wild opted against it. Now, the Wild can't send Sheppard to the minors because he passed the 160-game threshold that triggered waiver requirements. Amazingly, if he was scratched one game last season, that wouldn't have been the case.

It's tragic that Sheppard never got to spend one day in the minors. Since 2006-07, he has played almost no power play and seen limited minutes at the NHL level. The Wild took a promising talent and turned him into a checker.

"I remember talking to my dad about how junior wasn't tough enough but the NHL was too tough," Sheppard admitted. "But at the time, I was too young. If I would have been able [to play in Houston], I think it might have helped."

The American Hockey League isn't a punishment. At the start of the NHL season, 570 players -- or 84 percent of all NHLers -- spent time in the AHL, including more than 200 former first- and second-round draft picks.

"This includes everyone from Jason Spezza to Marty Brodeur to Jay Bouwmeester to Zdeno Chara to Patrice Bergeron to Billy Guerin to Brent Seabrook to Mikko Koivu," said Jim Mill, the Wild's assistant to the GM, the Aeros' GM and the former executive vice president of hockey operations in the AHL.

"Unless you're talking about the best of the best like Sidney Crosby, Alex Ovechkin or Evgeni Malkin, it's hard to find too many successful players in the NHL that didn't play in the AHL."

Gillies understands now he will be a better player for this experience.

"I wouldn't trade last year for anything," Gillies said. "At least I know where I am, what I need to do and how far I need to come. I still have a ways to go. It's like I told Jim Mill last week: 'I don't even think I'm ready to be called up. You will know when I'm ready. I'll be playing a lot better than I am right now.'"

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