Minnesota Wild Acquire Sean Bergenheim

The Minnesota Wild made a trade just before puck drop on Tuesday night to acquire forward Sean Bergenheim from the Florida Panthers.

In the trade the Wild send a 2016 3rd round pick to the Panthers. The Wild acquire Sean Bergenheim and Florida’s 2016 7th round draft pick. The Wild previously sent their 2015 3rd round draft pick to the Arizona Coyotes in the January 14 trade for Devan Dubnyk, which is why it’s the 2016 pick they’re sending to Florida. Bergenheim is in the final year of his contract with a $2.75M cap hit. He’ll be an unrestricted free agent at the end of the season.

Also, he’s Finnish, so, you know, another Finnesotan that Wild fans can latch onto.

We’ve talked about Bergenheim around these parts a few times lately. Andrew started his list of forward trade targets with him and I started my list of depth forwards to consider with Bergenheim as well.

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He’s a versatile depth player who is capable of adding a little secondary scoring. He’s ranged from 10-17 goals per season the last six seasons, while maintaining a P/60 above 1.5 in all but one of those seasons.

Bergenheim had expressed frustration in Florida, where he’d been regularly made a healthy scratch despite putting up the best P/60 of his career at 2.0 this season. Part of that number may be the reduced games and minutes he was seeing, but he’s also produced at a solid rate. He’d been scratched previously, but he’s been a healthy scratch in six straight games since the Panthers faced the Wild.

A large part of the frustration, though, stemmed from the lockout season when Bergenheim required sports hernia surgery that resulted in a battle with the team as to whether the injury occurred during the off-season or if it was during the playoffs the prior season. He had to file a grievance over it, which he won.

Bergenheim also done quite well in the playoffs. In 23 career playoff games he has 12 goals and five assists.

However, his major asset is his possession skill. Despite have negative relative zone starts in each of the last four seasons, he’s posted a positive relative Corsi For in each of the last seven seasons. That’s also the case with scoring chances — seven straight years of positive scoring chances for relative to his teammates.

His HERO chart throws all of this into pretty stark relief.

If you look at his Usage-Adjusted Corsi, he’s had a positive UA Corsi in every season and sits at 54.1% this season. He also has a 40.72 dCorsi (difference between expected Corsi and observed Corsi) this season. dCorsi is a metric where you see Bergenheim thrive. He’s twice in his career had a dCorsiImpact above 100, including an incredible 227.57 in the 2010-11 season.

Bergenheim should help the Wild take care of some depth issues. He’s a player who can take d-zone starts, get the puck out of the defensive zone while maintaining possession and get better zone starts for the top six. His presence — even if the Wild weren’t dealing with injuries to Matt Cooke, Ryan Carter, and Jason Zucker — will make the team better.

No word yet when he’ll join the team, but it would seem likely that he could enter the lineup as soon as Thursday’s against the Nashville Predators in Music City.

Next: The Seven Best Minnesota Wild Stats This Week

Usage Adjusted Corsi via Domenic Galamini. Other advanced stats via War on Ice. Salary information via NHL Numbers.