Minnesota Wild: Zac Dalpe Could Break Camp with Minnesota

Zac Dalpe has had a hard time translating his AHL successes to NHL ones.  Still last season offered a bit of a glimpse of how Dalpe could be a great option for the Wild to fill a depth forward spot.

As the Minnesota Wild continue to look to fill out their depth at forward, it looks like the one to two extra spots outside the normal starting lineup will have to come from inside the organization.  The Wild’s remaining cap space and their preference to have about $2 million in space to start the season makes it very hard to go to the free-agent market to acquire one of the needed forwards.  The good news is that right now inside the organization there exists just enough NHL tested talent to fill those one to two depth spots.

One of those players who stands out as an option is journeyman Zac Dalpe.  Last season was Dalpe’s first with the Wild organization and it seemed like he never had a chance to fully prove himself because of injury keeping him out of most of Iowa’s season.  Still in eight games played in Iowa, Dalpe put up three goals and an assist showing that maybe some of his past scoring touch maybe returning.

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He earned a late call up to the Wild and even appeared in three playoff games.  In two regular season games with the Wild Dalpe tallied a goal and showed a lot of heart impressing John Torchetti with his work ethic and two-way commitment.  Still that was last year and a different regime, does Dalpe have what it takes to make this year’s Wild club?

Dalpe to me draws similarities to Jordan Schroeder, he’s an offensively gifted player who was drafted high and has struggled to show that offense at the NHL level.  Dalpe has shown some scoring prowess in the AHL with two 20+ goal seasons, to include a 57 point performance in 2010-11 with Charlotte.  Still in 119 NHL games he’s only mustered 21 points (11 goals and 10 assists), begging the question if he can ever have success at the NHL level?

Still what makes Dalpe so interesting is how he’s incorporated physical two-way play into his game more and more to make up for his NHL power outage.  Combine that fact with the idea that Dalpe only needs to be a low-cost option to fill out the forward depth, and you can see why he might be the right choice to break camp with the Minnesota squad.  Dalpe doesn’t need to score, he just needs to be a ready body to insert into the lineup in case of injury of performance issues.

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Also his low cap hit of $600,000 makes him attractive to keep on the roster vice even some of the more promising Iowa prospects who are making slightly more.  Most of all Dalpe allows the younger prospects to stay down in Iowa and get playing time, whereas Dalpe has enough AHL time under his belt that it doesn’t benefit him as much to be there.  Additionally, he can sit in the press box at the X and not be negatively affected.

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So Dalpe’s chances of making the team out of camp are pretty strong.  He and Jordan Schroeder will be competing for that slot, but I think Dalpe might have a leg up on him right now.  A lot of factors are yet to be played out, but certainly remember to watch for Dalpe next month and if his training camp performance is strong he could be with the Wild to start the season.