Minnesota Wild: Schroeder Needs to Embrace His New Role
By David Fagan
In a relatively quiet off season for the Minnesota Wild, one minor drama recently played out in down town Saint Paul. The bit players in this diverting drama? Former Golden Gopher and 2009 first round pick, Jordan Schroeder, and the Minnesota Wild Front Office.
Minnesota Wild
The drama began with Schroeder filing for arbitration, seeking a pay increase and a one way contract to presumably push Wild coaching staff to include him in the opening night line up. Schroeder was coming off a two year, two-way contract that saw him paid $600,000 with the big club and significantly less down in Iowa. He spent most of last season bouncing between Minnesota and Iowa, at times sitting the press box. Despite this he put up decent numbers in the AHL, a total of 34 points in 40 games, good for fourth on the team.
It was however his continued lack of production at the NHL level that saw him fail to hold on to a place in the NHL. So after leaving Vancouver for a fresh start with Minnesota Schroeder found himself being cast again solely as an AHL player. Las season Schroder was called up to fill in for injuries and found himself playing predominantly on the fourth line, with relatively unskilled players like Jarret Stoll and Chris Porter. His production was perhaps reflective of his deployment and he only managed 2 goals and 4 points in 26 games.
As summer drew on talks between the two parties floundered and the arbitration date drew nearer Chuck Fletcher and Minnesota Wild management placed Schroeder on waivers in what can only be described as a power move. The Star Tribune’s Michael Russo explains that this move was designed to strengthen the Wild’s case had the matter progressed to arbitration.
Related Story: Jordan Schroeder Inks a One Year Deal
Less than a week later it was announced the Wild and Schroeder had come to terms. Unsurprising to many with the way it played out Schroeder signed a one year, two-way contract worth $650,000 at the NHL level and $275,000 in the AHL (per GeneralFanager). In a concession in keeping with experienced AHL players Schroeder has $300,000 of salary guaranteed.
With the award of another two-way contract the Minnesota Wild have spoken volumes about the speedy forward’s role with the club going forward. He can expect to be a top six forward in Iowa getting plenty of minutes with the occasional trip to the press box for Minnesota. His chance at becoming a full time NHLer appears to have passed. But beyond this, as he enters his sixth season of professional hockey the 25 year old Schroeder can be expected to be looked upon as a leader in Des Moines.
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Schroeder should embrace this role and not become embittered with not cracking the NHL full time. He’s in a fantastic position to continue to play professional hockey at an extremely high level and expand his personal development through mentoring new young professionals like Alex Tuch, Sam Anas and Mario Lucia. Playing with skilled line mates such as these will do wonders for his production in Iowa and with the shift towards four skilled lines in the big club, maybe Jordan can make his next call up to Minnesota’s fourth line stick.