Deadline moves help Minnesota Wild’s present, but at what future cost?

Summary

While there is no way to say for sure what the Wild give up when moving draft picks, we can look at what they have done historically and use that to project forward. One must also keep in mind what we received in return for those picks.

There is no doubt that when it comes to the first Round, the Minnesota Wild have a strong track-record, and the value of that pick is certainly very high. A Hall-of-Fame goaltender’s value going into the playoffs is also very high.

It is worth noting, that if the conditional second round pick the Wild traded for Fleury were to turn into a first round pick, it would be the latest 1st rounder the Wild have ever had, at a minimum of 29th overall.

If it stays a second rounder, the Wild would have two more this draft, and while there have been decent results for the Wild in the second round it is not a big loss given an already deep prospect pool that will get even deeper this off-season.

The third and the fifth that went for Deslauriers and Middleton are almost negligible in that the chances are low that those picks ever amount to a significant impact player on the Wild’s roster. In return for them we received two players that stand to help the team make a deep playoff run this year, with Middleton starting his time with the Wild already on the top pair with Jared Spurgeon.

The 2022 NHL Entry Draft will be held on July 7th and 8th in Montreal.

All data was collected from NHL.com and hockeydb.com