By Tony Abbott -
Charlie Stramel was going to need a fast start to this season to dispel the doubts that came with the Minnesota Wild picking him 21st overall in the 2023 NHL Draft. Stramel came into the draft having only posted five goals and 12 points in 33 games as a freshman at the University of Wisconsin. Those numbers will raise some eyebrows for a first-round pick, and the Wild unwittingly fueled the skepticism when Bill Guerin essentially conceded the team drafted for need.
"There were a few other players we could have taken," Guerin explained to The Athletic after the draft, "but to fill the need [at center] was pretty important this year."
Stramel did not have a fast start this season by any means. An early-season injury sidelined him for four games, and he wasn't making an impact when he played. The Rosemount native didn't find his way onto the scoresheet until his ninth game of the season. The injury and subsequent struggles cost Stramel a spot in the Badgers' top-six forwards and a spot for Team USA's World Junior Camp last week. The latter was a particularly significant snub because Stramel made the team in the previous two seasons.
Stramel has a long way to go to rehabilitate his reputation among the Wild faithful, but stringing together a few weekends like his two-game set against No. 17-ranked Penn State helps. Stramel quadrupled his point total on Friday night. He notched three assists and then scored his second goal of the season.
Stramel needed the production, but moreover, he looked noticeable. He got to loose pucks, made smart passes, and funneled himself and the puck toward the net. Stramel looked like the player Minnesota hoped to get when they scooped him up in June.
The weekend took him from having a single point in 10 games to entering Wisconsin's winter break with five points in 12. Stramel's production is still not impressive in its entirety, but now he gets something optimistic to dwell on while having almost three weeks to shake off the remainder of his injury rust.
The question is: Will even a second-half surge stop Wild fans from feeling buyer's remorse with Stramel?
If people were skeptical of Stramel at the draft, these events have sent Wild fans racing to be the first to declare Stramel a bust. It doesn't help that there's a strong candidate to be Stramel's foil in Gabriel Perreault, who the New York Rangers took 23rd overall in 2023. Perreault has a similar background to Stramel; both are American college hockey players.
Perrault is also a smaller, slower winger, which the Wild presumably sought to avoid in drafting for need. Perreault five goals and 25 points in 17 games with Boston College, intensifying the criticism surrounding the Stramel pick.
Is it fair? Probably not, but it is natural, especially with Stramel's start. But as the signs of life he showed this weekend demonstrate, it's way too early to judge the pick.
For one, Stramel's injury happened at the worst possible time. Getting hurt near the beginning of the season sets players up poorly. When a player returns in that situation, they're at square one when everyone else has had a chance to ramp their games up. It's an even bigger disadvantage when injury strikes as a new coach comes in, bringing two players who play the same position as you, and you have to find your game on the third and fourth lines.
Remember that it wasn't long ago when folks were slapping the bust label on Matt Boldy. Boldy, as in "the 30-goal-scorer" Boldy. The guy who has 118 points in 147 games. That guy was supposedly a reach and a bust.
Boldy scored a goal in his first game for Boston College after the Wild drafted him in 2019, but then disappeared for about the same amount of time as Stramel. Boldy got mired in a 10-game pointless streak, reaching the winter break with a goal and two assists in 15 games. You know what happened next and how silly the people rushing to write him off look now. Why get fooled again?
It'd make sense for Stramel to be hitting his stride a few games after returning from injury and figuring out a way to be productive in a lower-line role. Even in the best-case scenario, though, Stramel is probably not putting up the kinds of numbers you'll see from Perreault at the college level. That wasn't ever the point, and the Wild have been honest (perhaps too honest) about it from Day 1.
I'm not trying to take anything away from Perreault, a great prospect having a terrific year. You'd call that a win if Minnesota added him to their coffers of dynamic wing prospects like Danila Yurov, Liam Öhgren, and Hunter Haight.
But the one thing Perreault isn't is "a center." Fans hate "drafting for need" instead of taking the "best player available," but they also hate going through two decade-long dry spells in producing homegrown centers. If you're going to draft for need somewhere, that's where you want to do it, as Minnesota did in 2015 when they took Joel Eriksson Ek over Brock Boeser.
It's easy to forget how the Wild faithful initially regretted that pick. The sentiment no longer exists, even as Boeser sits second in the NHL in goals. But there was a time that was very real. The big, two-way Eriksson Ek didn't seem to progress all that much, while Boeser's stock rocketed in the first seasons after Minnesota passed on the scoring winger.
Much as it's too early to say Stramel will flop, it's way too early to say Stramel is the second coming of Eriksson Ek. But Stramel has the physical attributes and speed to become an Eriksson Ek-like force, which is a player type Perreault can never be, even at his best. Again, that's no knock on Perreault. But there's a reason why the Wild's choice in 2015 worked out, and history repeating itself is still in play now.
Besides, even if we want to take the short view on the Wild's strategy of targeting centers, it's looking very good in the early goings. Judd Brackett and his scouts picked Rasmus Kumpulainen 53rd overall, passing on more skilled wingers to grab a big center. Then they took Riley Heidt, a smaller pivot who married positional value with raw skill at 64 overall.
It's early, but both picks are playing well. Kumpulainen is putting up a point per game in the OHL in his first season adjusting to North American ice. Heidt is leading the WHL with nearly two points per game. If Brackett, the leader of the scouting staff who uncovered Kumpulainen and was smart enough to scoop up a falling Heidt, says of Stramel's potential, "the sky is the limit," hasn't he earned the benefit of the doubt?
It's reasonable to have some concerns with Stramel, of course. Stramel's freshman season at Wisconsin was a lost year because of the program's low point, and the start of his sophomore season was looking headed toward another one. You can only string together so many lost seasons before they become lost potential. But just as Boldy did only five years ago, Stramel still has plenty of time to turn things around and enough in his toolkit to justify his selection. We'll get a clearer picture of him in the second half of the season.
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