Post Mortem Edition of who Should the Minnesota Wild Sign

3. Matt Duchene (114pts)

When starting this process, Matt Duchene was the first player who came to mind who would best solve the Wild’s scoring woes. His skills make the breadth of his game incredibly wide, he’s still young at 27, scores at a prolific rate (just a hair under a point per game), and incredibly fast. The one slight against Duchene over his career is that he can’t always handle the spotlight. He isn’t exactly a top echelon center, but he would be miles past second line centers. Plug Matt Duchene onto this team and he’s immediately your first line center. I can’t imagine him playing behind either Koivu or Staal.

But on draft day, when Nashville fully unloaded P.K. Subban’s contract, the word around the league was that Matt Duchene was finally going to Music City to fulfill his love of country music.

I’m surprised he isn’t getting more after Kevin Hayes got 7-years/$7 million per. I know I raved for Hayes as a dark horse acquisition for the Wild, but for the Preds to get Duchene at about a million more than the Flyers got Hayes is a steal. I would love to see Dutchy and Granlund play on a line together… just not against the Wild.