Is an Offer Sheet a Viable Option For the Minnesota Wild?

Minnesota needs some star power up front. Zach Parise, Mikko Koivu, Eric Staal, and Jason Zucker to a lesser degree are all starting to age.

While the Wild have prospects that could turn into substantial players like Ryan Donato, Kevin Fiala, Joel Eriksson Ek, and Jordan Greenway. Those players are all far away from being stars at the moment. The Wild need help now and there’s one name that springs to the forefront of my mind, Brayden Point.

Can the Wild Fit Point in the Salary Cap?

The Wild have a flux cap situation right now. Between the players that could potentially retire, and the players that need to be re-signed off their entry-level contracts, it’s hard to project the Wild’s cap.

As of right now before any roster moves, the Wild have $18,679,744 in cap space. This is their current line-up as of their last game. As you can see it’s missing Parise and Koivu as both were on injury reserve for game 82 of the Wild’s season.

From that roster if you look at CapFriendly you can see that all of Nico Sturm, Ryan Donato, Kevin Fiala, and Joel Eriksson Ek all need new contracts for next season. This complicates the situation but regardless the Wild should be able to fit in Point’s salary with marginal salary re-structure.

Affording the Compensation for Point

Having Point on the team is definitely a fun concept but can Minnesota afford the compensation costs? Well first we have to project Point’s salary cap hit and then we can look at the compensation for it. Luckily for me the hard work has already been done by someone much smarter than I am.

A Twitter account and website by the name of Evolving Wild went through and created a system to project different player’s future contracts. It’s already proven to be effective as the new contract for Esa Lindell was within 500k of the original projection from the site. Anyway here is the final graph that lists all the current projected contracts for this upcoming summer. As well here is the explanation from their twitter on how they made their system.

More from Gone Puck Wild

The projection for Point is roughly $8,244,551 per season over a 5 year term. Roughly speaking projecting Point in the 8-8.5 million dollar a year range seems like the most likely AAV for Point. Now for the compensation, according to the new NHL rules the current compensation board looks like this, according to CapFriendly.

With Point’s salary in consideration, it looks like the cost for Point is two first round picks, one second round pick, and one third round pick. A steep price to pay. Is it worth it though?

Draft Pick Probabilities

Drafting is largely a crap shoot. The majority of NHL drafts don’t often lead to more than 1-3 players ever playing an NHL game, and maybe one, if that, makes a significant impact. For the Wild, giving up those picks for a bonafide superstar in Brayden Point should be a no-brainer.

In an article by Money Puck on draft prospect success probability he finds that on average a first round pick has a roughly 35-40% chance of seeing NHL success. A second round pick has a roughly 15-20% chance of NHL success and a 3rd round pick has only a 8-15% chance of success.

This represents marginal gains and looking at past history for the Wild confirms that. Since 2012 only 2 players, Louis Belpedio and Kurtis Gabriel, have seen NHL time from the third round. Only Gustav Olofsson and Jordan Greenway have seen NHL time from the second round. Finally, in their first round since 2012, the Wild have seen Matt Dumba, Alex Tuch (oops), Joel Eriksson Ek, and Luke Kunin play NHL minutes.

Outside their first round, the Wild have precious little to show for all their drafting, which in my mind justifies the move. Look at it like this, if the Lightning offered up Point in a trade and wanted the 12th, the 42nd, the 73rd, and a 1st round pick in 2020 would you do it? I think 99% of people would make that trade.

Wrap Up

So what do you think? Should the Wild look in to offer sheeting Brayden Point? Personally I think it makes a lot of sense, and would give the Wild a superstar for the now and the future. Let me know in the comments if you’d offer sheet Point. Until next time!

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