Minnesota Wild: Missing Out on Cullen Hurts

Matt Cullen decided on Wednesday to put an end to the speculation and signed a 1-year $1 million contract to return to Pittsburgh.  The Minnesota Wild were rumored to be interested in signing Cullen, but now are forced to put him into the category of another missed opportunity to improve their roster this summer.

So it is official the Pittsburgh Penguins got their man back.  It was announced late Wednesday afternoon that Matt Cullen and the Pens have agreed to a 1-year $1 million contract to bring the Minnesota native back for what has been speculated to be his last NHL campaign.  This might come as a shock to many around the State of Hockey, as it was widely anticipated that the Minnesota Wild would be bringing Cullen home to sunset his career in the Land of 10,000.

There’s little doubt that the Wild were in talks with Cullen to sign him for the 2016-17 season.  The extended timeline of his signing gave most of a glimmer of hope that the Wild were influencing the decision and it wasn’t a matter of if, it was just a matter of when.  The Wild had a limited amount of cap space, but certainly had enough to make a Cullen signing a reality.

When asked what took so long to sign, Cullen told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette “It was quite a bit slower moving than a lot of free agencies I’ve dealt with, but I think a big part of that was I made it really clear that I wanted to go back to Pittsburgh.  We didn’t feel any sort of urgency to get anything done immediately.”

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On the surface that statement seems like a player who was steadfast in his dedication to signing with the team he was with.  Diving deeper into it you might be able to infer that Cullen might have said he wanted to go back to Pittsburgh, but he might be leaving out the part for the right price or barring other considerations.  Basically I might tell my boss I want to stay with the company another year, but if I get a call from another company who will give me more money in a location I that I like…I want that job too.

If Cullen wanted to resign with the Penguins right away that could have been done easily earlier in the summer if he was so important to GM Jim Rutherford’s plans.  When you’re talking about the matter of $1 million for a season, that’s not a hard contract to fit in to your cap space right away without taking too much risk.  The issue here is that one side flinched and next thing you know suitors from other teams came calling to make offers forcing this timeline to extend this timeline.

The Wild were more than likely one of those suitors and for some reason couldn’t get a deal done.  The Pens cap situation is a mess and were barely able to squeeze this contract in.  If the Wild only offered $0.2 million more they could have at least put the Pens in a position where they couldn’t match their offer.  It might seem a bit pricey to pay $1.2 million for Cullen, but consider the effect he had on a similarly young set of forwards in Pittsburgh and what he could do for the group in Minnesota.  Not to mention there was a large contingency of fans that wanted this deal done, which sometimes justifies expenditure on a player.

It’s no secret that GM Chuck Fletcher is one more disappointing season from being run out of town with torches and pitch forks, so why is he being so conservative in his approach to free agency?  Not signing Cullen isn’t about necessarily about missing out on adding Matt Cullen to the roster, it’s about another missed opportunity to make the team better.

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The fans were promised drastic roster improvements and all they’ve gotten is a reclamation project in Eric Staal, a re-tread in Chris Stewart, and more of the same players who let them down last season.  Cullen is a winner the fans wanted.   Coming off a Stanley Cup season, he’s someone with a huge work ethic who would come in and play hard even if the team was slumping.

Bottom line here is that it seems that the Wild are entering this season still with a lot of uncertainty about if they actually are a better team player wise.  Signing Cullen would have gone a long way to making that uncertainty a lot less.

Next: Time is Now to Make a Run

Sure this might be a decision that was made about cap space as Fletcher seems to want to keep the current $2.17 million in cap space remaining for roster moves or potential trades.  But consider this, the Penguins after making all their expected roster moves will only have about $500,000 to $600,000 in cap space, and they are the defending Stanley Cup champs returning almost the same team they won with.  I guess that $2.17 million can be used as a severance package when Fletcher is forced out next season.  Maybe I’m just being a bit gloomy.