Wild reportedly a frontrunner to sign Ben Meyers

The Minnesota Wild are looking to add more options down the middle and one route they are heavily researching is getting the top college free agent available, who just so happens to be from here.

According to Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman, who appeared on The Athletic’s “Straight from the Source” podcast, the Wild are one of just two frontrunners to get the signature of University of Minnesota captain Ben Meyers. The other team is the Detroit Red Wings, which is just so predictable; and he also names the Philadelphia Flyers as a team that is very interested but not considered in the conversation.

Michael Russo follows up Friedman’s report with support, saying that Minnesota are going “hard” after Meyers.

Reports like this come with piles and piles of grains of salt, so take this as you will, but it does just make sense for the captain of the championship-hopeful Gophers to have him staying in Minnesota as an option. The 23-year-old could certainly jump in the NHL right away and at least make the forward depth much more interesting heading into the playoffs. Of course, he will not be eligible to appear in the actual playoffs, since he was not on the Wild’s roster by the trade deadline, but he would certainly be an interesting option down the regular-season stretch. Where will he play? Well, we’ll go over that if he puts pen to paper.

He does already play like a Wild player, which includes getting extremely timely overtime goals.

The undrafted Delano, Minn. product had 17 goals and 41 points through 33 games in the regular season.