Declan Chisholm Is Making Himself Impossible To Ignore

I like the way he plays and contributes. I also like the fact that he doesn’t look lost out there (like #4).

Yeah, I agree. Winnipeg was foolish not to trade him but Minnesota capitalized.

I think Merrill is the obvious guy to replace. Bogo has been alright and as a RHS there's good reason to say the six defensemen are locked in for next year. Hunt and Spurgeon will kinda be questions for next year as will Buium. Will the Wild have to do anything drastic, no I don't think so? Could they make a move to shuffle the deck and try to get Chisholm into a more prominent role?

I think he's on a trajectory where if he stays with the Wild becomes Brodin's replacement. Buium is another left shot so it kinda becomes a question of how you wanna organize your defenders. Spurgeon for the first time last year was irrelevant. It looks like Guerin will be forced this off-season to make some tough calls on who to keep and who to trade for upgrades. A couple guys are gonna be history but between prospects and players like Rossi or Chisholm, who do you keep? Where do you fit them in? Do Yurov and Buium have a spot waiting for them that squeezes out another guy?

I think Chisholm has staked claim to the 3rd pairing as it's guy. Buium or Bogo are the last man. Merrill will find another team we hope or could sign a 1M deal to be in reserve. I really think the smart thing is to move Spurgeon and upgrade the defense by adding size and reducing cost. I.e. improve depth with the money and players like Chisholm or Buium who are much less expensive. The nest 2-3 years are looking like a nice window, especially if Kaprizov can be extended. 

9 minutes ago, Protec said:

I really think the smart thing is to move Spurgeon and upgrade the defense by adding size and reducing cost.

Spurgeon is an awesome guy and teammate, as well as a quality player, so it will likely be hard for Guerin to want to choose this path, but it's possible he'll end up going that way to construct the best team he can put on the ice.

trade faber fat ass and rossi for matthews already! (once matthews is off IR)

throw in Wally as the goalie saver for maple nation

then play kap zuccy (once he heels up his ball) and matthews on line 1

EK and Bolds and our favorite scapegoal on line 2

Brilliant!

11 minutes ago, OldDutchChip said:

trade faber...and rossi for matthews already! (once matthews is off IR)

throw in Wally as the goalie saver for maple nation

First and foremost, that trade doesn't come close to being possible under the NHL salary cap rules. This master plan to trade less than $3M in salary cap for $13.25M in salary cap doesn't warrant further consideration.

39 minutes ago, Imyourhuckleberry said:

Spurgeon is an awesome guy and teammate, as well as a quality player, so it will likely be hard for Guerin to want to choose this path, but it's possible he'll end up going that way to construct the best team he can put on the ice.

It would make the most sense.

Assuming they don't re-sign Merrill and the other thing I think needs to happen is seeing how NHL-ready Buium is.  Hopefully Buium will sign on at the end of the season and we can evaluate that a bit.  If he looks good, then I think it's a foregone conclusion to move on from Spurgeon.

Bogosian is someone I'm good with keeping considering we just don't have any other defenseman like him (size, willingness to body opposing teams, and RHS).

I could see the defenseman being Faber, Brodin, Middleton, Chisholm, Buium, and a mix of Bogosian and hunt depending on who we were playing.  Again, that's if Chisholm continues to play well and if Buium looks the part as a NHL-caliber D.

The main issues I have with losing Spurgeon (aside from his experience/hockey sense) is losing his RHS.

The other thing is figuring out how we trade him.

His salary is fairly large so just not any team is going to want to take that on.  The teams that could do it tend to be in the bottom half of the league and most are probably on his no-trade list. 

We could sweeten the deal with higher picks or a decent prospect, but again, the teams that will value those most will be the rebuilding teams which are likely not to be an option. 

This means we likely have to deal with some of the fringe playoff teams and (probably) will have to hold some of the cap hit from Spurgeon's contract.  It also means those teams may value picks and prospects less, so we would likely have to part with someone who is a NHL player too.  The most likely candidate out of what we have would probably be Rossi. 

I wouldn't want to move him as a sweetener though, so it would be good to find a team who has a younger player at around Rossi's level who fits our needs more and maybe try to do Rossi and Spurgeon for an improvement on Rossi (if the team is insistent on finding someone else).  The problem with that is whether a team will be interested in two smaller stature players for their young up-and-comer. 

Difficult to say.

4 minutes ago, Imyourhuckleberry said:

First and foremost, that trade doesn't come close to being possible under the NHL salary cap rules. This master plan to trade less than $3M in salary cap for $13.25M in salary cap doesn't warrant further consideration.

i didn't say the trade makes sense haha but i suppose we can make it work by gifting them Trenin!

just thought of throwing out a crazy ideas

feel free to do the same - it's friday 🙂

1 hour ago, raithis said:

The other thing is figuring out how we trade him.

His salary is fairly large so just not any team is going to want to take that on.

And bro turns 35 in a week, is diminutive and is coming off major reconstructive surgery.  I gotta believe he's here til the end of that contract.

1 hour ago, OldDutchChip said:

gifting them Trenin

That's like shitting on someone's head and saying i just gifted you a hat.

Russo posted that Trenin's 3rd in the NHL forwards (Foligno 2nd) in 5-on-5 expected goals against per 60 min.  I guess I'll trust the science over my eye test.

#lumberwagondrinkinggame

I'm always hearing, "It's a business."

You'd have to consider replacing Spurgeon with a less expensive, bigger guy.