By Justin Hein -
Bill Guerin and 27 other NHL GMs are probably golfing a lot (like me) right now. After someone wins the Stanley Cup in a few weeks, that number will rise to Guerin plus-31. Most of them will enjoy it.
Guerin won’t.
He has a lot to do before the NHL draft. While the Wild have only four picks in this draft, and none until Day 2, they need to line up a bidding war for Marco Rossi. If they trade Rossi, Minnesota doesn’t just need a fair return for the productive 23-year-old Austrian. They need a return that keeps their Cup window alive.
So when the GM says, “Our [defense] core is set, I'd like to focus on forwards,” he may not get to be picky.
There are two interesting notes about the Wild’s playoff showing: they didn’t need Marco Rossi to be competitive, and defensive depth was as much a liability as the forward depth.
While it’s debatable whether the Wild used Rossi optimally in the playoffs, it’s hard to argue that they used him in great volume. Ultimately, it seems that John Hynes doesn’t trust Rossi to drive a scoring line in the playoffs. Whether that’s correct on Hynes’s part, it’s hard to imagine that changing.
Taking that as a given, the optimal move is to swap Rossi for a player of a different flavor whom the Wild will use better. And if the defensive depth was as much a liability as the forward depth, that means the team has more potential trade partners in a Rossi deal. If they’re going to be picky about when they want to win, they may not have the luxury of doing it by improving specifically at forward.
Another wrinkle in the plan to open a multiple-year competitive window is the 2026-27 salary cap situation. Extending Kirill Kaprizov and replacing Mats Zuccarello’s production will come at a hefty cost, and it’s necessary to remain competitive. It’s pretty tricky timing to replace a top-six forward, because the upcoming cap increases smell very lucrative for those players’ agents.
That means Rossi’s replacement needs to be cost-controlled until the 2027 offseason. Minnesota's core will be cost-controlled once the cap is clean in 2026-27. Kaprizov, Joel Eriksson Ek, Matt Boldy, Brock Faber, Jonas Brodin, and Jacob Middleton will be locked up alongside this mystery second-line replacement for Zuccarello. Zeev Buium, David Jiricek, and Danila Yurov provide projectable young talent that can fill out the middle of the lineup.
Add in the Rossi trade return, though, and the 2026-27 cap space gets tight. The solution: find a player who’s interested in a short-term, cost-controlled deal with upside for an explosive payday on July 1, 2027.
A recent column in The Athletic mentioned Bowen Byram and K’Andre Miller as two interesting assets that may fit that description. Both are left-handed defensemen on struggling teams who have strong second-pair results in spite of the challenges presented by their teammates.
Miller spent last season on a Rangers team that’s hard not to describe as a let-down. After taking the Florida Panthers to six games in the 2024 Eastern Conference Finals, the Rangers spiraled throughout the 2024-25 season and missed the playoffs by six points. Stanley Cup aspirations turned into trade deadline sales. As Miller watched his teammates leave, perhaps he wondered how much money this season cost him in a contract year.
Byram was a phenom for the Colorado Avalanche in their 2022 Stanley Cup win before his 21st birthday. He’s in line for his first payday, but Evolving-Hockey.com projects him for only $8 million AAV on an eight-year deal.
During his tenure with Colorado, The Athletic projected Byram for a plus-five rating in his prime -- top-pair quality and valued around $6.5 million in 2024-25 cap dollars. Based on the future cap increases and a three-percent cap inflation after that, his average value would be around $9.7 million between his age 26 through age 32 seasons.
However, his time in Buffalo hasn’t always been so impressive. In 2023-24, Byram’s minus-four rating smelled more like bottom-pair than top-pair production.
If he comes to Minnesota for two years and joins a roster that competes for a Cup, perhaps he’ll rediscover his Colorado form and get paid in his prime when his market value will never be higher. Byram could maximize the timing of his largest contract with the peak of the cap explosion, and leverage that against that encouraging age curve he was on with the Avalanche.
Byram is 23, and Miller is 25. Both are entering their primes on a perfect timeline to meet Minnesota’s Cup window, with good reason to take a short contract in hopes of a payday in the 2027 offseason.
I hear the protests now: But the Wild already have Middleton and Brodin! This will block Buium’s development! Let’s not forget about Brodin’s superpower, though: His uncanny edgework allows him to play his off-hand when needed. He allows one of Byram or Miller to play top-four minutes, while potentially easing Brodin’s workload. Alternatively, Brodin can shift into Spurgeon’s role, softening the grind for the 35-year-old righty.
The bottom line is that Minnesota out-scored the Las Vegas Golden Knights in six games this April with Marco Rossi riding the fourth line. Take him out and supercharge the bottom defense pair with Middleton, Byram, Miller, or Spurgeon (pick your favorite), and tell me that’s not a contender.
This trade also has room to add pieces or combine with another trade. If management wants to move on from one of Spurgeon, Brodin, or Middleton. One of those players could be added to clear cap space and improve the forward group with another piece coming back. If the Wild want a real blockbuster, they could include a package of Rossi, a defenseman, and a prospect such as Liam Ohgren.
That would allow the team to get younger, add a top-six forward, and go all-in for the next few years while potentially improving cap flexibility in the immediate future.
Trading Rossi for a young, top-four defenseman would require some creativity -- either in the lineup or in the adjacent roster moves. Still, trading a cost-controlled, productive 23-year-old center is a pretty creative decision in itself.
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