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By Tony Abbott -
Addison's role as the team's power play quarterback was valuable, but is that enough to get a top asset via trade?
It's not impossible to imagine a future where Calen Addison remains with the Minnesota Wild. But that future is becoming less favorable by the day, by the move, and the insider leaks.
Over the last two months, Addison has experienced a bizarre change of fortune. As recently as February, you could still make an argument that the rookie defenseman should receive Calder Trophy consideration. And despite his many healthy scratches lately, his 28 points trail only Owen Power (35) and Jake Sanderson (31) for the rookie defenseman lead.
But the Wild all but effectively ended his season in trading for John Klingberg. You could see the sense of the move, even if it made things awkward in the meantime. For all his warts, Klingberg offered playoff experience and helps Minnesota break out of their zone, a big weakness for them all season long.
Surely that didn't mean anything else for Addison, right? Right?
It increasingly looks like it does. February's healthy scratches might, in different circumstances, have been a normal bump in the road for a 22-year-old defenseman. Instead, it feels like a precursor to Addison being on the outs with an organization that hasn't been patient with young players.
Michael Russo is as plugged into the thought process of the organization as anyone, and he has been speculating this for about a year. He last confirmed this on Saturday's "Worst Seats in the House" podcast, saying:
I think the Wild have given up on him, I think they're gonna trade him this summer. I think the biggest kick in the you-know-what [Editor's Note: likely testes] was the other day in Colorado, when they played [Alex Goligoski] at a forward position when Addison made the most sense.
Do the Wild have the ability to move on? Maybe. But maybe not. They will almost certainly lose Klingberg and Matt Dumba in free agency. Minnesota enters the summer with more dead cap space ($14.7 million) than cap room ($12.3 million). Klingberg and Dumba may not reach their current cap hits of $7 million and $6 million. But even a discount takes up too much flexibility for a team that only has 13 of 23 roster spots filled.
So an Addison-less Wild team would have to backfill internally. Goligoski has had a rough year with plenty of healthy scratches of his own, but he has another year on his contract at age-38. Brock Faber signed on Sunday, and Minnesota expects him to make the jump to a Top-4 defense role immediately.
Those players both carry risk to them, though. Goligoski's age is a concern. Already, Minnesota doesn't view him as an everyday option, regardless of if that's because he's not good enough to crack the lineup lately or if he benefits from the additional rest.
Faber is as polished as an NCAA product as it gets, but will it translate to the NHL right away? Having someone like Jonas Brodin to shepherd him is a good start. But there's a step between even highly-competitive NCAA and Olympic play to the NHL.
Daemon Hunt has skills and showed flashes of them in Iowa this year. Still, rushing a (soon-to-be) 21-year-old defenseman to the NHL after a 10-point season in Iowa seems misguided. Defense prospects like Simon Johansson and Ryan O'Rourke have also taken their lumps in Des Moines and need further development.
So, Addison feels like the only game in town if Minnesota wants a third-pairing defenseman with upside. If they are indeed done with him, though, the return is almost guaranteed to be disappointing.
In theory, a 23-year-old right-shot defenseman who has shown he can run a power play is pretty valuable. But as the half-decade-plus quest by three Wild general managers to trade Dumba might tell you, just because a player theoretically has value doesn't mean that they have it on the actual trade market.
Usually when teams are trying to shop young assets, they utilize a strategy known as "pump-and-dump." They show them off by putting them in favorable situations, boosting their numbers (the pump), and then offload a possibly inflated asset onto another team (the dump).
Addison doesn't have much pump to him. Or, at least, if they did, Evason and the Wild let quite a bit of the air out. 28 points in 60 games this year? That's a good start. But slow-playing him to the NHL means that Addison only has 78 career games under his belt at age-22.
Among players in the 2018 Draft class, Addison ranks 31st in games played. For some perspective, Jack McBain, the former Wild prospect who only signed out of college with the Arizona Coyotes last year, already has 90 NHL games. That's hardly enough time to build a great NHL resume.
Other teams can also see what's happened with Addison, too. They can see that Addison is getting healthy scratched for sixth-and-seventh defensemen types in Jon Merrill and Goligoski. It's easy to conclude that Minnesota wants to move on, and their history shows that once they've decided they're done with a player, they move quickly.
In fairness, Bill Guerin's traded depressed assets for good value before. Getting a second-round pick for McBain, who told the Wild outright he wouldn't sign with him? That's a win, considering the circumstances. You can nitpick the wisdom in giving Jordan Greenway a contract that looked awful one year later, of course. Still, you can't deny flipping that contract for a second-round pick a year later is nice work, considering Greenway's seven points in 45 games.
But the salary cap ties Minnesota's hands when it comes to trading Addison. They can't take on salary, not without dumping another one. So either they get someone else's problem youngster, or they get another draft pick. Both are a risk. If teams give up on a young player, there's a reason. And any draft pick isn't likely to contribute for about three years, at least.
Is that worth it? Not if they're blowing a massive hole in the roster. Even if Addison is never anything but a power play specialist, he's the best quarterback the Wild's ever had guiding their top unit. With Kirill Kaprizov, Matt Boldy, Filip Gustavsson, Joel Eriksson Ek, and perhaps Marco Rossi in their primes, is now the time to abandon a top power play just to reshuffle the prospect deck?
Right now, Addison's simultaneously too valuable to Minnesota to be worth shipping out for a meager return, and not valuable enough to bring back a premium asset. It's a trade value no-man's land that seems destined for disappointment.
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