Minnesota Wild: Is it time for the team to make a trade?
By Luke Ryan
Looking around the league, there’s been plenty of trade activity lately; nothing mind-blowing, but certainly enough to create some noise. Is it time for the Minnesota Wild to come to the party?
The Minnesota Wild have some trade-able assets and you have to imagine that General Manager, Paul Fenton has been working the phones. Chuck Fletcher’s return to the league could be useful in this regard given he knows the team’s players.
In the past week or so, we’ve seen the following transactions:
- Daniel Sprong for Marcus Pettersson
- Josh Leivo for Michael Carcone
- Morgan Klimchuk for Andrew Nielsen
- Nick Schmaltz for Dylan Strome and Brendan Perlini
As we said, nothing mind-blowing but you look at each of these transactions and look around the Minnesota Wild and Iowa Wild rosters and have to believe that there are players that could be traded.
Daniel Sprong, for example, is an AHL point-per-game 21 year-old winger and is the sort of player that the Minnesota Wild shouldn’t give up on. This means guys like Mason Shaw and Luke Kunin should be firmly off the trade block.
Looking at the older guys Sam Anas and Justin Kloos, by comparison, they don’t have the same youth on their side or point-per-game pedigree, but certainly offer similar returns to Morgan Klimchuk.
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If a player like Michael Carcone can be swapped for an NHL-calibre, arguable top-nine winger with some size, then Paul Fenton would be wise to offer up some of the depth in the system for those sorts of returns.
I’m not calling for a crazy deal, just a couple of one-for-one trades that bring some youth and exuberance to the system.
When even the Iowa Wild are looking a little longer in the tooth than you’d like, it’s time to recycle some of your players.
The returns can be B or C-grade prospects, just so long as they’re four or five years younger than the current core.
Looking beyond the Iowa Wild group and seeing if there’s anyone interesting on the Minnesota Wild roster that could be shipped out, you can count at least four or five guys that could be viewed as trade bait:
All have slightly different value, but you’d have to think that, given there’s 30 other teams out there, that a deal could be managed.
Maybe you can convince a General Manager of the untapped potential of Nino or Charlie and steal a high-end prospect from under their noses. Maybe J.T. Brown is worth at least a draft-pick, same with Nate Prosser.
As for Jonas Brodin, it’s safe to say you would be asking for a little more than as draft-pick.
Next. Off to face the Western Canadian contingent. dark
There’s no need to go crazy, but I’d like to see a trade before Christmas!