Minnesota Wild: Solid Low Cost Trade Options

The last month of the offseason will go fast and the Wild will need to work in order to acquire one more bottom six NHL ready forward.  With limited salary cap space, a low cost trade could be the best option to keep salary cap flexibility while at the same time acquiring a solid forward.

As the Minnesota Wild look to push through the last month of the offseason one piece of unfinished business seems to be evident, the team needs another bottom six forward.  Even with the entering argument that Tyler Graovac will make the team and center the fourth line, the Wild seem to be lacking some solid NHL ready talent to fill out that line.  Of course the hot rumor is still that Matt Cullen is going to sign with the Wild and make his Minnesota return, but the conventional wisdom is that he might be due a pay raise the Wild may or may not want to pay for in order to keep close to Chuck Fletcher’s preferred $2-3 million in cap space.

So if Cullen doesn’t sign then who can be the final forward to fill out the lineup?  The easy answer would be to pick from the large list of veterans that are unsinged UFAs right now, but they offer a further cap hit.  A trade works much better to preserve the Wild’s preferred cap situation, and it doesn’t even need to be a big name type of trade either.  It would really be about making sure the players swapped are about equal in cap hit, and in the case of a bottom six forward the price would be relatively low.

The entering argument for any possible Wild trade for a forward is still defense for a forward.  In the case of a lower line forward, the Wild should look to trade a lower pairing defender.  That’s mostly due to trying to keep the talent level and cap hit equal, no sense in trading a higher pairing defender for a bottom six forward.  Additionally the Wild have enough NHL ready talent that they can lose a defender and not be too hurt by it.

Related Story: Filling the Fourth Line

Looking at it though that lens the Wild should try to leverage defenders like Christian Folin, Nate Prosser, or even one of the prospects like Gustav Olofsson (I’d consider Mike Reilly pretty much off the table for these discussions due to his projected long-term impact).  If needed the pot could be sweetened by another prospect, or possibly a draft pick which the Wild look very healthy on in the next three seasons as they only have a second round pick in 2017 missing from their arsenal.

As far as the type of player they should be looking for in return it should be a player whose cap hit is sitting at about $1 million and has more than a season left on their contract.  The money is to make sure that the acquired player will be close to the player the Wild trade, and the term is essential because of the free-agent signings that will need to be made next offseason.  So when scanning the league a few players standout in fitting into this criteria.

Jake Virtanen from the Vancouver Canucks could be a great option to fit into this bill.  The Wild could use the 19 year-old power forward who has 55 NHL games under his belt already.  The Canucks though so strongly of Virtanen that they could have sent him back to the WHL, but decided to keep him with the team instead.  So he’s young, but NHL ready and has displayed a lot of potential as a power forward with a scoring upside that can develop with time.

The Canucks need a defender badly.  A player like Folin could offer them an NHL experienced option at a low cost and low cap hit that they’ll need to stay within their $2.77 million of space.  As a matter of fact the Canucks would gain a tad on the cap as Virtanen’s hit is $894,167 compared to Folin’s $725,00.  Even if the Canucks GM Jim Benning puts a premium on Virtanen, the Wild can afford to sweeten the pot a bit with a later round draft pick, and still keep a strong bevy of picks intact.

William Karlsson of the Columbus Blue Jackets would be another player Chuck Fletcher and the Wild should look into.  He’s also still pretty young at age 23 and has shown great promise as a power forward coming off his first full NHL season.  The Blue Jackets also like the Canucks have small cap room to work with $3.8 million, and are probably even more depleted on the blueline than Vancouver.  Additionally, he’s a former Duck and came up in their system, so Bruce Boudreau will be more than familiar with his strengths and how best to play him.

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The young Swede has excellent possession numbers across his 102 NHL games and would be able to plug-in anywhere on the bottom six forward slots.  The Blue Jackets would also gain on the cap a bit if they swapped for Folin, Prosser, or Olofsson as Karlsson is sitting on a new contract worth $1 million in annual cap hit for two seasons.  Also like before the Wild could use a later round pick to sweeten the pot if necessary to acquire Karlsson.

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It just goes to show you that a good trade isn’t always about a big name, it’s about getting what you need for the right price.  And in this case these too players are what the Wild need and could be done for the right price.  If Fletcher truly wants to have around $2 million in cap space and add another forward, he’ll have to investigate a lower cost trade like this.  Then again he said that last year, and Matt Cullen might be too much to pass on.