Yes.

There's no need at all to change the original string to extract the data you want. All you need is to match it.

if($line =~ /^(\S+\s+\S+)/) {
    $match = $1;
}
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or even simpler:

($match) = $line =~ /^(\S+\s+\S+)/;
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Note that for the latter, the assignment must be in list context, not scalar context; that's what the parens around the variable on the left hand side are for.