One Player The Minnesota Wild Should Consider Trading For
By Jim Lynch
The Minnesota Wild have a lot of free agents to worry about this offseason and chances are they are going to lose some of them considering the tough salary cap situation they are in. The team has just seven million in cap space to make moves considering this coming season they have almost 13 million in dead cap space in the books due to the Zach Parise and Ryan Suter buyouts.
Next year that is not going to get any easier as there will be two more years of almost 15 million in dead cap space on the books. The Wild are in a tough spot, and they are going to have a hard time competing for the Stanley Cup unless they start making some moves.
One player they could trade for to help is Philipp Kurashev of the Chicago Blackhawks. Kurashev has played just two years in the NHL and has put up just 37 points in 121 games. The 22-year-old is currently a restricted free agent for the Hawks and it shouldn’t take that much salary to sign him for three or four years. If they could get him signed at 1 million or 1.5 million they can begin to work on building a roster for the future.
We saw the Hawks give up another player, Brandon Hagel, with a similar idea in mind. Hagel still had two additional years on his contract at 1.5 million and Tampa Bay saw that as a great opportunity to save some cap space and add a good value player.
While Kurashev has not proven he is that good of a player yet, it is a gamble that the Wild might want to make if they are going to stay competitive in the short term.
The Minnesota Wild are going to have to do their best to get through the next three seasons. These buyouts are going to haunt them for a while especially considering how good the team was this season and how they still ended up out in the first round. They are not going to be able to add much this offseason due to the cap hurdles they have in front of them, but if they are smart they can still be competitive with that core group intact.
Overall, this is a good hockey team. Kirill Kaprizov, Mats Zuccarello, Joel Eriksson Ek, Ryan Hartman, Jared Spurgeon and Matt Dumba make up a really good core group, and considering Hartman is only making 1.7 million and Eriksson Ek is just making 5.25 million they are in a good spot with those deals.
This team is just a couple of good hockey trades away from being competitive next season once again, now all we have to do is see how they do it.