By Thomas Williams -
The NHL's trade deadline is just hours away. We aren't even counting down days until 2:00 p.m. CST on Friday, it's hours or even minutes. And what do the Wild have to show for their effort? Well nothing, yet.
They re-signed a player that could have been hitting the market, but still have several options that Bill Guerin could pull off before his time is up.
First, they could just go the standard route of finally accepting that they are a seller, with the gap between them and the playoffs increasing. Players like Brandon Duhaime, Connor Dewar, Patrick Maroon, and Jon Merrill are reportedly available for trade from this team -- so it's a whole lot of depth players that could be had for fairly cheap.
Duhaime is their best bet at making this week worth it, as teams are circling around him as a "playoff-style player" and as a pending unrestricted free agent, there would be no strings attached. Or, a team could see that as an opportunity to sell him on sticking around earlier than the rest.
Dewar, Maroon, and Merrill are all players that the Wild would most likely accept a mid-round pick as their trade return. Nothing special, but they are just starting to reshape their roster from the bottom and with young players potentially filling those roles (younger in the case of Dewar, since he is still fairly young) they see these players as expendable.
Another option the Wild could do, is look for the long-term options. With Kirill Kaprizov still here, Matt Boldy entering his prime, Mats Zuccarello risen from the dead, Joel Eriksson Ek playing his best hockey, and a blue line that should never be bad with the players they have; why shouldn't the team go out and try to add a player that could be beneficial for them for the next two or three years? It might be a trade we don't necessarily see coming, but Guerin surely isn't afraid of making moves and moving out a young player for a player that is under contract but proven, could be manageable. Who is that player? We have zero clue.
And finally, if all else fails or Guerin is just bored, they can act as a broker yet again. The Athletic's Michael Russo reported that the team is not looking to do that again -- after the Orlov and O'Reilly deals they had last year -- but at the very last hour, the Wild general manager could be tempted. No reason to rule it out to snag a mid-round draft pick yet again.
The Wild aren't at center stage of the trade deadline, no. They don't have major pieces to sell, or are trying to buy for a Stanley Cup run -- they are just simply existing in the middle and possibly, won't even do anything at all.
That's Wild
- The Wild re-signed Zach Bogosian to a two-year deal just months after acquiring him from another team -- sound familiar? Some believe that the Wild just simply bought into the player's bounce back to his average. [Hockey Wilderness]
- The latest on Marat Khusnutdinov's timeline is that he is hopefully arriving in the United States by the end of this week after some paperwork has been figured out. [Russo]
- Liam Ohgren has been quietly back in the SHL and has such a mature game, that he should be a clutch performer. [Hockey Wilderness]
Off the trail...
- The Vegas Golden Knights will just not stop getting the best players on the market. On Wednesday night, they acquired defenseman Noah Hanifin from the Calgary Flames and even after that, have enough cap space to get a player like Jake Guentzel at 50% retention. [Sportsnet]
- In case you need to get caught up in this crazy week of the trade deadline, a tracker: [NHL dot com]
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