The Minnesota Wild’s game with the Vegas Golden Knights is reported to have been attended by several scouts.
Whether this news is related to a forthcoming trade for the Minnesota Wild is anyone’s guess. Having already made a swap deal with Carolina for Victor Rask and one with Anaheim for Pontus Aberg, you have to wonder whether there are players in the line-up that have strong appeal to other teams or whether they’re there to look at the Golden Knights.
There have been suggestions that it’s somewhat coincidental and that the Buffalo Sabres scouting team uses Las Vegas as a base for a group meeting. Now that there’s a hockey team there, it makes sense that they’d attend Golden Knights games as part of that meet-up.
Either way, it didn’t escape the attention of media outlets:
McGuire reports there are a ton of scouts at the Minnesota/Vegas game. Wonders if there is something going down. #mnwild #VegasBorn
— NHL Watcher (@NHL_Watcher) January 21, 2019
It might suggest that the Sabres may consider a move for (more likely) a Minnesota Wild player given the tenuous hold on a wild-card spot the team currently has. Especially when you compare it to Vegas’ relatively safe grip on a play-off position right now.
Looking at the Minnesota Wild’s expiring contracts, you’d have to think Eric Staal, Eric Fehr or either Andrew Hammond or Alex Stalock might hold a degree of appeal to a Buffalo Sabres side that could well make the play-offs this year.
Assessing the trade action post-game, there was just the one deal sending Brad Hunt from the Vegas Golden Knights to the Minnesota Wild; it’s hardly likely that all of the scouts in attendance were looking at the healthy scratch!
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In fact, that deal likely was on the table either prior or midway through the game and wouldn’t necessitate other scouts to be in attendance.
It’s all pure speculation, but maybe these scouts were just doing their job and several decided to escape the winter for the desert heat.
The Vegas Golden Knights have played a few games on home ice of late, so maybe it’s not even the Minnesota Wild they were all looking at.
Still, you have to hope that there might be a trade or two forthcoming for the Minnesota Wild. If nothing else, it will continue Paul Fenton‘s shake-up, sending a very clear message to the team that they shouldn’t rest on the laurels of consecutive play-off appearances.
He certainly seems to have made that message clear already, but I’m all for it being reinforced!