BREAKING: Marco Scandella Receives 5-Year Extension

The two-way defensemen has greatly improved his game over his career and today, he finally gets rewarded for his hard work. The 24 year old signed a 5 year, $20 million contract extension on the heels of being the overtime hero in Friday night's game against the Dallas Stars.

This is just yet another slew of young talent that the Wild are trying to keep around long term. Minnesota signed defensive partner Jared Spurgeon prior to this season to a three year extension, Jonas Brodin to a 6-year deal, Charlie Coyle to a 5-year deal, Nino Niederreiter to a 3-year extension, Jason Zucker to a 2-year extension,and are still working on a contract extension for Mikael Granlund.

The Wild are not normally a team that discusses contracts with player during the year, but this season has been a complete reversal on that front office mindset.

Marco Scandella has been notably getting really tough deployment and has answered the bell consistently. This season he is adding much more of an offensive element to his game. He's also become very clutch. Per a stat from Star Tribune writer Michael Russo, out of the 12 career goals from number 6, five of them have been of the game-winning type. I know there are a lot of fans out there very happy that Pizza, as we at HW affectionately call him because of his Italian sounding name, will be around for quite awhile longer.