The Minnesota Wild didn't have much in the way of big fish to offer up to the NHL during the trade deadline, but they managed to make some small moves. First, they flipped Brandon Duhaime to the Colorado Avalanche yesterday, then shipped Patrick "Paddy" Maroon out to the Boston Bruins today. The final move up their sleeves dropped as the deadline expired: Connor Dewar is headed to the Toronto Maple Leafs.
Dewar probably didn't register to many as a trade candidate for the deadline, or anytime soon, really. He wasn't the sort of playoff-tested veteran (like Maroon) that teams tend to seek at this time of year. Unlike Duhaime, Dewar was under team control this offseason and not in line for a big raise. So what was the motivation to move Dewar?
It likely comes down to two things. The first is that he was one of very few short-term, movable pieces the Wild had to offer. Minnesota locked up formerly pending UFAs like Ryan Hartman, Marcus Foligno, Mats Zuccarello, and most recently, Zach Bogosian to extensions. If Minnesota wanted to get any assets at the deadline, it left them few other options than Dewar.
The other issue prompting the Wild to trade Dewar is that they simply have to open roster spots. Already, Minnesota needs to make room for Marat Khusnutdinov's arrival. They surely want to give Adam Beckman a look after a strong run where he scored six goals and 10 points in his previous 10 games with the Iowa Wild. More spots are going to be on the way in Liam Öhgren, Danila Yurov, and Riley Heidt in the near-ish future.
Someone's got to be on the move, and it won't be one of the many players with trade protection. So the Wild chose to give up their lowest-upside players in Duhaime and now Dewar. That's not to say that either player was not good or didn't have a role on a good team. Dewar in particular was what you could call a nice little fourth-line guy.
A strong defensive center who can score the occasional goal (especially on the penalty kill, as he's in the top 10 in Wild history with four short-handed goals in just 173 games) is a very useful player. Toronto certainly thinks so, or they wouldn't have thought to add him.
Still, how likely is Dewar to turn into a nice little third-liner? Not particularly, it would appear. He's young, but his 82-game averages amount to 9 goals and 18 points. There might be more room for growth, of course. Even so, his upside is surpassed not only by the Yurovs and Heidts of the world but also by players like, say, Hartman as a fourth-liner.
That lack of upside takes us to the return, where the upside also seems lacking. The Wild are receiving Dmitry Ovchinnikov and a fourth-round pick in 2026. Ovchinnikov is a 21-year-old fifth-round pick from 2020 who didn't appear in EP Rinkside's preseason list of top Maple Leafs prospects (they went 18 deep), nor did he make Scott Wheeler's recent list, putting him outside the top-15 prospects of a bottom-tier farm system.
The good news is Ovchinnikov is already in North America and has seven goals and 10 points for the AHL's Toronto Marlies in 20 games. The not-as-good news is that those seven goals have come on just 17 shots. He's not only rocking an incredibly unsustainable shooting percentage (41.7%), but is shooting fewer than once a game as a forward.
The fourth-rounder in 2026 doesn't really grade as a top-tier asset, but it's another lottery ticket for the Wild to re-shuffle the deck and find the Connor Dewar of the future. Hardly a massive trade, but Minnesota did make it, and now you know why.
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