By Thomas Williams -
The Minnesota Wild made their first substantial move around the NHL trade deadline, and it was for an aging veteran who has worn the colors before.
Announced by the team on Saturday afternoon, the Wild acquired forward Gustav Nyquist from the Nashville Predators and sent their 2026 second-round pick down south.
It was a move seemingly out of nowhere, as the Wild have been subtlety connected to a couple of players on trade boards scattered across the internet, but nothing as a cemented rumor.
However, it was a trade potentially made out of necessity. With Joel Eriksson Ek and Kirill Kaprizov out of the lineup and some mediocre play from the team overall, the Wild have been losing their grasp of a playoff spot. A 5-5-0 record in their last 10 games and a three-game losing streak -- it's no coincidence that it has been three games since Eriksson Ek suffered his injury -- put the Wild in a position to make a move now before it was too late.
Is Nyquist the right candidate for this potentially season-saving move? If he played like he did in his previous stint in Minnesota, potentially. Just two years ago, the Wild traded a fifth-round pick for a then-injured Nyquist, and he was able to play the final three games of Minnesota's regular season and then all six playoff games against the Dallas Stars. Through those nine games, Nyquist scored one goal and 10 points and appeared to find new life in St. Paul.
Now two years older and a pending unrestricted free agent at the age of 35, Nyquist is showing his decline. The winger has scored nine goals and 21 points in 57 games with the Nashville Predators, the third-worst team in the West. Not the electric season he hoped for when he was able to be on a team with Steven Stamkos and Ryan O'Reilly, but no one on that team has had anything anyone would call a good season.
Nevertheless, Wild general manager Bill Guerin has pulled a familiar move. He knows Nyquist and knows what he looks like in Minnesota, so he went ahead and traded a much higher draft pick for a player who is significantly older than he was when he was last playing for this team.
The timing of this trade and the player they acquired just feels like a slight act of desperation and trying to cling onto a top-three spot in the Central Division. Thankfully, the Wild banked enough points that they shouldn't completely drop out of the postseason.
The Colorado Avalanche are banging on the door and most likely will take the Wild's spot. Still, as Minnesota drops into the first Wild Card spot, the Vancouver Canucks are seven points behind them with just one game in hand. It would take two significant streaks -- the Wild continuing to lose and the Canucks re-finding their form -- for Minnesota to be at risk of not making the playoffs.
But that is the fear and what might have just caused this trade to be made. Nyquist could be a welcome addition to the Wild's top six, but it is a little bit of a puzzling move until the puck hits the ice and we see it fully fleshed out. For now, it's trading a fairly valuable asset for a 35-year-old winger who isn't having a great season and might not even make more of an impact than anyone in the organization before Saturday.
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