This offseason will be pivotal in Mathew Dumba’s future with the Minnesota Wild. With his impending RFA status, the Wild will have to decide fairly quickly which option for Dumba is best for the team going forward.
Mathew Dumba entered the 2015-16 NHL season with something he never had in previous seasons, a spot in the top six defensive pairings of the Minnesota Wild. After breaking camp he knew he’d be part of the Wild lineup day-in and day-out and that he would spend the entire season in Minnesota and not going up and down to Iowa. It seemed that finally Dumba would have all the playing time he needed to prove himself and put up monster numbers for his impending first free-agent contract.
The results from the season speak for themselves, Dumba really didn’t progress much if at all. Some would even argue that he took a step back. With the Wild in the midst of evaluating promised roster shake-ups, they will have to answer some serious questions on what they want to do with Dumba.
They can outright re-sign him to his first RFA contract and retain him. They also can sign him then trade him, or as an RFA trade him without signing him (they just need to give him a qualifying offer). All of those options offer the Wild different rewards with different risks. Time is also a factor in some of the options, so the Wild will need to decided what do with Dumba sooner rather than later.
Retaining Dumba is a great option. More than likely it will cost very little to see if he’ll make his rebound next season and his production is still good enough to be in the top six defensemen on the team. The issue here is how to negotiate his free-agent contract. The Wild will need to leverage his average play to make sure they sign him to a contract that reflects an average player.
Re-signing and keeping Dumba would be the easiest option. Dumba’s current cap hit is $894,166, so more than likely he’ll be looking to make somewhere north of $1 million. He’s still a few years away from being a UFA, so the term both sides would want is most likely 1-2 years. The Wild will want to keep the salary down, but maximize the term. Dumba will want as much salary as he can, and will look to keep the term down as to be able to leverage a higher salary in later negotiations. The Wild should be able to keep his salary at a modest raise considering his production last season.
If the Wild re-sign Dumba with the intention of trading him, the negotiations will be pretty much the same with a few exceptions. The biggest factor in this scenario will be making sure his cap hit stays within the room of perspective trade partners based on the players they will be perusing. Additionally, the Wild will need to make sure the term of the contract is as high as it can be. This creates more stability for the team he’d be traded to, because they would not have to discuss his contract for a while.
If the Wild choose to trade Dumba without signing him first, they will need to do a lot more work than the first two options. First and foremost, they need to make sure the team they trade him to can and will offer a contract close to what Dumba desires. The Wild can parlay their negotiations with Dumba to figure out what he’s seeking contract wise, and then turn around to a perspective trade partner and let them know these are the terms he is looking to sign for. It can be said though in this option the trade value of Dumba goes down because of the inherent uncertainty of signing him to the gaining team’s preferred terms.
There’s no way to know exactly which way the Wild will go with Dumba, but one thing we do know is what GM Chuck Fletcher thinks of him. At his end of the year press conference he was quoted by Michael Russo of the Star Tribune as saying of Dumba:
"“I think if anything, I think he’s way too hard on himself. I think he definitely lost his confidence. He had a great start, came into camp in great shape. Had a great summer and a great start. I thought he was going to have a monster year the way he was scoring goals early. And he lost his way. I think the longer it went that he didn’t score, I think he got away from his game a little bit. I think he started to cheat a little bit. And it was harder for him to get the puck then. When you get away from how you’re supposed to play, when you don’t play the right way, you have the puck less. The better you defend, the more you have the puck. The more you have the puck, the more you score. He lost his way, there’s no question. But he’s a good player who scored 34 goals the last two years in 120 games and I think 31 of them were even strength. So considering we’re sitting here talking about how he gets better, he scores an even strength goal every four games, never plays on the power play and he had 34 goals in two years. So I think the bar that he set this year is going to be the lowest it’s set for his career. He’s going to be much better than that. And we’re still talking about a guy with 31 even strength goals in two years. He’s disappointed. But that kid works. He’ll come back better.”"
Next: Expectations for Jason Zucker
The Wild know what they have with Dumba. Fletcher can see and sell his value to just about any team out there, and they have options on how to get value from him even if he stays with the team. As said before though, the organization does not have a lot of time left to decide what they want to do with him. So expect some signs very soon as to which option the Wild will choose.