With NHL trade deadline looming, should Wild buy or sell?

Left wing Sean Bergenheim’s one goal in a Wild sweater was his lone point in 20 combined regular and postseason games after Minnesota acquired him and a seventh-round pick from the Florida Panthers on Feb. 24, 2015 in exchange for a third-round pick the Panthers used to select Gopher forward Rem Pitlick. (MHM Photo / Jeff Wegge)

Minnesota’s regime of Chuck Fletcher and Brent Flahr have never shied away from adding at the deadline. Last year, the team mortgaged two of their top 2017 draft picks to land Martin Hanzal. While in past years they’ve acquired such players like Matt Moulson, Sean Bergenheim, Ilya Bryzgalov and Jason Pominville. Probably the team’s best move – which wasn’t necessarily at the deadline – was when they acquired Devan Dubnyk from Arizona for a third-round pick and Dubnyk turned out to be a franchise goaltender, with two All-Star appearances since.

With just 26 games remaining in the regular season as of Feb.14 and the Wild in a dog fight for a playoff spot, Minnesota is in peculiar spot. On one hand, the team is in the midst of playing their best hockey of the season. Since the new year, Minnesota has just three regulation losses – 10-3-3 – while posting the best record on home ice – 20-4-2 – in the NHL.

Yet, the team has been so hot-and-cold this season, it’s tough to buy in to their recent sample size of success. They blew a 3-0 lead to the worst team in the league, the Arizona Coyotes, in a Feb. 8 loss and nearly suffered the same fate to the New York Rangers on Feb 13. Although they’ve been phenomenal on home ice, recent road performances against Dallas, Pittsburgh and Colorado in the same stretch leaves you wondering if this current group can make a deep run in the postseason.

Here are three options for the Wild to consider by the time the NHL trade deadline hits on Feb. 28.

1. Stand pat

If I was running the Wild, I would not make any significant moves this month. After suffering a barrage of injuries at the beginning of the season to core players, Minnesota is finally healthy outside of defenseman Jonas Brodin who will be out until March. The team is playing its best hockey of the season and with all the draft picks Minnesota has forfeited over the years, there’s not exactly a lot of future assets for Minnesota to package in a trade.

Dubnyk is playing well, the power play is turning around and players like Zach Parise and Charlie Coyle have had an uptick in their play, which the team desperately needs. Combine that with a generally weak market, it really doesn’t make much sense for the Wild to make add anything at the deadline.

2. Clear some salary cap

Rumors are swirling ahead of this month’s trade deadline about a potential return to Pittsburgh for Wild center Matt Cullen. (MHM Photo / Jonny Watkins

It wouldn’t shock me, however, to see the Wild sell a regular in the lineup for more draft picks and salary cap relief heading into the offseason. With Jason Zucker and Matt Dumba approaching big pay days this summer, Minnesota will need all the cap space they can get. Trading a player like Tyler Ennis could be beneficial for the Wild. Ennis, who was the key piece in a trade with Buffalo last summer that sent Marco Scandella and Pominville to the Sabres, has been disappointment statistically in his first season with the Wild.

Ennis has just 15 points (seven goals and eight assists) in 54 games this season while averaging just under 12 minutes a game. He has a cap hit of $4.6 million this season and is on the books next season for the same amount of dough. If Minnesota is able to obtain a mid-to-low-round pick for Ennis, that would be a win for the franchise in the longterm. The Wild just can not afford to pay a forward nearly $5 million a season to be a 20-point producer in the regular season. Plus, Ennis’ contract could be attractive to a team that’s trying to get the salary cap floor.

Other veterans like Matt Cullen and Chris Stewart have also been scratched on more than one occasion over the last few month. Both players will be free agents this summer and there’s even been some speculation that Cullen could return to the Penguins, according to to the Pittsburgh Post Gazette.

3. Get ready for the kids

If the Wild were to move on from Ennis and/or Cullen that would obviously create a void in the lineup which would be an ideal time for young top-tier prospects to get some legitimate playing time such as former first-round picks Joel Eriksson Ek and Luke Kunin. There’s no doubt the organization thinks highly of them and obviously the hope is that one day they will be contributors in the lineup. In addition, Wild prospect Jordan Greenway of Boston University,  currently with Team USA in the Pyeongchang Winter Games, could very well sign with the Wild when the college hockey season ends.

Sure the idea of Dion Phaneuf, Rick Nash or a even a Marian Gaborik reunion sounds like a fun idea, it just doesn’t seem like it’s in the cards for the Wild this season.

If they’re going to make a run at the Stanley Cup, it will likely be with the same core group of players that’s help the State of Hockey’s NHL team reach the postseason in five consecutive seasons.

The post Trade Deadline Primer appeared first on Minnesota Hockey Magazine.

Dynamic duo of Craig Leipold and Chuck Fletcher combine to build a contender in Minnesota.

They are the NHL’s version of Bonnie and Clyde, Starsky and Hutch and Penn and Teller, all rolled into one. Part good guys, part bad guys and a whole lot of magician.

Wild Owner Craig Leipold and General Manager Chuck Fletcher have wheeled, dealed, and in some ways stealed (yes, I know the proper word is stolen – but it had to rhyme) their way into being a contender in the NHL. The latest moves at this years NHL deadline were just another example.

Lets look back at what they have done in the past two years. July of 2012, they sign arguably two of the biggest stars in the game Zach Parise and Ryan Suter—virtual no brainers, as long as a team could find the cash and/or convince the tandem to work out a deal so that they could play together. The move proves to be brilliant in two ways: They have been everything a team could hope for on the ice, and players want to play with them.

Which leads me to the Wild’s second great move, bringing in Jason Pominville at last year’s trade deadline? He had 9 goals in 10 games last season and he’s already got 46 points this year. It was a risky move for Minnesota because they shipped out young talent. For Pominville it was a chance to leave the hockey “black hole” that is Buffalo to come play with guys like Parise and Suter in Minnesota.

But those moves weren’t enough for the Wild brass. Simply making the playoffs wasn’t good enough—which is exactly the way it should be! Leipold and Fletcher run the Wild in a way any fan should appreciate. They know that the product on the ice, for the most part, is dictated by how much you pay for players.

Yes, drafting good players and bringing them up through the system is the best way, but unless you have a draft pick in the top 10 picks, the chances of getting the next Sidney Crosby, John Tavares or Nate MacKinnon are slim. You can take a chance on a few guys in later rounds and hope they pan out, but guys like former St. Cloud State Husky Ryan Malone, (4^th round 1999), Detroit’s Henrik Zetterberg (7^th round 1999) or Philadelphia’s Max Talbot (8^th round 2002) don’t come along that often.

Which brings us back to what Leipold and Fletcher are attempting to do here in Minnesota: Refusing to give up and refusing to believe that this state is not a winning hockey state.

Niklas Backstrom is shutdown and Josh Harding is ill?

No problem, go out and deal for Ilya Bryzgalov.

Scoring punch lacking a little bit?

Fleece Buffalo one more time and deal for Matt Moulson.

And once again it’s working. Other than the fact that I have to believe everyone in Buffalo hates Minnesota for the talent they’ve literally stolen away in the last two seasons.

Bryzgalov was not brought in to be the next Vezina Trophy winner. He is here to back up the young and talented Darcy Kuemper when he needs it. Yeah, Bryz got lit up in his Wild debut, but give him a little time to adjust.

The fact is he got the team some points in the game that ended as a shootout loss and that is all that you want from a back up. You hope for more, but as long as he can keep the train on the tracks while Kid Kuemper gets a much-deserved night off, well than anything more is gravy.

The deal for Matt Moulson was even better. Moulson is a three-time 30 goal scorer (all done with the Islanders, no less) who has toiled away his career with the Isles and Buffalo. About the only two teams worse to play for would be the (Former) Atlanta Thrashers or Siberia of the KHL (and yes, they have a team).

It was somewhat known that Moulson didn’t love Buffalo, but still to be able trade for him what Minnesota did was almost criminal. The other two players in the deal were pretty much a clean swap, so they essentially traded two second round picks to Buffalo for Moulson’s services for the rest of the season at a very reasonable price.

How good was this deal? As much as a day before the deadline, the organization wasn’t totally sure it would even get done.

As we love to say in Minnesota, the pieces are in place for the Wild – and kudos to the organization for doing so. In any professional sports league there are more ‘wait and see’ folks than there are ‘lets get it done now’ people.

Be happy Wild fans your management is a card-carrying member of the latter. A card they have been maxing out getting this organization to where they want it to be. All of which will be worth it if the Wild now does what Fletcher and Leipold believe they have built it to do, make a playoff run.

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Wild send Torrey Mitchell to Buffalo for Matt Moulson

After trading for backup goalie Ilya Bryzgalov Tuesday, the Wild have acquired left-winger Matt Moulson and center Cody McCormick from the Buffalo Sabres in exchange for winger Torrey Mitchell and an undisclosed draft pick, The Buffalo News reported.

Members of the Wild front office didn’t immediately return phone calls seeking confirmation.

The move was reportedly made just a few minutes before the 2 p.m. trade deadline.

Moulson, 30, is in the final year of his contract, meaning he’ll be an unrestricted free agent at the end of this season, something the Wild desired. A three-time, 30-goal scorer provides top-end talent to a Wild team that ranked 25th in goals per game entering Wednesday, and 27th in shots per game.

Moulson was traded from the New York Islanders to the Buffalo Sabres in the move that sent former Gopher Thomas Vanek to the Islanders earlier this season.

Moulson, who comes with a $3.13 million cap hit, has 17 goals and 19 assists in 44 games.

McCormick, 30, has played in 358 NHL games, recording 19 goals and 40 assists in those games. He also will be an unrestricted free agent at season’s end.

Mitchell, who reportedly asked for a trade out of Minnesota, is headed to the Sabres.

He signed a three-year contract with the Wild in 2012 but never received the playing time he anticipated after the team added Zach Parise and Jason Pominville. He also had been outplayed by some young players.

This season, Mitchell has been relegated to the fourth line, where he’s recorded one goal and eight assists in 58 games.

Follow Chad Graff at twitter.com/ChadGraff.

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