With the Minnesota Wild’s training camp in the not too distant future, general manager Bill Guerin finally checked off the biggest item on his summer to-do list. After negotiations dragged on throughout the spring and summer, he’s finally come to an agreement with restricted free agent Marco Rossi. The 23-year-old forward agreed to a three-year, $15 million contract which eliminates the possibility of a hold out or another team flashing an offer sheet at him.
If that number seems somewhat familiar, the $5 million average annual value is exactly what the Wild reportedly offered, and Rossi rejected, back in the cold, dark days of winter. So, why sign that deal now instead of a few months ago and save all of this needless drama? Rossi took a gamble that the Wild, seeing long-term deals handed out to Logan Stankhoven and Matthew Knies would fall in line and do something similar. To Guerin’s credit, he stuck to his guns and held firm despite the threat that he might have to match an offer sheet beyond what he envisioned paying his young centerman.
One thing Rossi did gain in holding out from signing as long as he did was to shorten the deal and set himself up for a nice payday down the road. With the way the contract is structured ($4 million in the first year, $5 million in the second, and $6 million in the third) he’s forced the Wild to tender a contract of at least $6 million in the summer of 2028 or else he becomes an unrestricted free agent at the relatively young age of 26-years-old.
With the deal, he gets a nice raise, and a chance to show the Wild and the rest of the NHL that he is a top-tier forward in the regular season and the playoffs. He’ll slot into the second-line center spot behind Joel Eriksson Ek and take some pressure off of the incoming young forwards Danila Yurov and Liam Ohgren.
It also gives Guerin an idea of what the cap obligations will be for the next few seasons as he works out new contracts for Kirill Kaprizov and Filip Gustovsson. While it appears the Wild have plenty of cap space (they are still about $4.4 million below the top end) that can disappear quickly when long-term contracts are handed out to young players. No matter how much the cap goes up over the next few years, there will be a crunch for Minnesota if Yurov, Zeev Buium, and David Jiricek play up to their potential. That doesn’t even account for the prospects that haven’t made the team yet like Ryder Ritchie and Charlie Strammel.
Signing Rossi also prevented Guerin from having to scramble to fill Rossi’s spot on the roster had the young Austrian held out or signed an offer-sheet that the Wild didn’t match. Minnesota needs offense. Yes, they boast one of the better defenses in the division, but they need to be able to put the puck in the net in order to keep up with Dallas and Winnipeg.
Over the past two seasons only Kirill Kaprizov and Matt Boldy have found the back of the net more often than Rossi. He has 45 goals in 164 games over that span, and there is an excellent chance that he has the potential to score 35-40 a year if he earns more playing time, especially on special teams. Over his two full seasons in the league he’s averaged just 2:14 of power play ice time per game. If he can earn his way to closer to three minutes a game, that could lead to a jump in his offensive production.
That would have been a fairly decent size hole for Guerin to have to fill this late into the off-season. Now he doesn’t have to worry about sacrificing any additional resources or prospects to land a second-line center.
With the signing, the Wild are pretty much set at the forward position. There is still some question about who will fill out the bottom-six spots and who will spend time in the press box as a healthy scratch, but that is a relatively minor issue.