With the Official start of hockey just over 2 months out let’s look at a recap of what the Minnesota Wild have done so far.
We will start with the 2018 NHL Entry Draft where despite me watching the entire draft I couldn’t remember a single Minnesota Wild pick after Filip Johansson, and even that pick was more of a head scratcher. So I had to go to NHL.com to figure out the rest.
Jack McBain is a name to remember, he models his game off of Ryan Getzlaf and is committed to play college hockey at Boston College. He also has a nice hockey lineage following after his father Andrew McBain who played in 608 NHL career games.
The other name I’ll touch on is Sam Hentges. Sam is a Minnesota boy from Fridley who played High school hockey at Totino Grace, and has committed to play college hockey with St. Cloud State. He is a player we might never see at the NHL level but with the right dedication to the game and some breaks along the way he might get his chance.
After our mediocre draft, where we made the safe picks to help the future of the organization, we had free agency to look forward too. First off we bought out Tyler Ennis, who was the prized piece in return for our last season trade with Buffalo.
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2 of our main additions were depth forward J.T. Brown, who should be a nice addition to our bottom 6 Forward group, and Greg Pateryn, who should fill in as a 3rd pairing defense-man maybe getting some time with Nick Seeler.
The Minnesota Wild truly made a bigger splash retaining our own free agents. They did a good job at keeping Nick Seeler at a team friendly contract 3 year $2.175 Million. That contract doesn’t break the bank and gives him a chance to outperform the pay before his next payday.
We also had the good news of signing Matt Dumba and Jason Zucker who are looking more like key pieces at keeping the wild competitive into the future.
Long story short, the Minnesota Wild didn’t make a splash like some of the fans would like to see. Which might mean another year of playoffs and home. We also have an aging core that might not be able to keep up with some of the youth within our division.
Only time will tell about this 18-19 Wild team and if more moves are needed to keep us competitive in this very difficult division, but there should be optimism around the team as they have a new GM to play for and the start to a new season where anything can happen. Look at the Vegas Golden Knights last year or Alex Ovechkin raising the cup in Washington. Why can’t this be our year for glory?