Wilderness Walk: Where Would Marco Rossi Go In A Re-Draft?

I mostly remember people being lukewarm for Anton Lundell at the time just because he was a standard 2way forward that was considered another safe Minnesota Wild pick.

i think he was at the time a good pick but when Rossi dropped I think almost everybody was pounding the table to draft him.

30 minutes ago, TCMooch said:

I mostly remember people being lukewarm for Anton Lundell at the time just because he was a standard 2way forward that was considered another safe Minnesota Wild pick.

Lundell had a phenomenal rookie season, making it look terrible for missing out on him. This last year, however, he was given more ice time and was significantly less productive, not far above Foligno's scoring/60 pace last season, at least in  5v5 minutes.

It remains to be seen if Lundell will be more like the rookie version or the sophomore version moving forward. The difference is substantial, and Rossi definitely has a chance to be better than the sophomore version.

My thought was that center options were available at that time. Lundell was Koivu 2.0 and both Jarvis and Mercer were great skaters. These were the main guys we thought would be available at 9th. They were bit when Rossi dropped it wasn't too surprising because he is a smaller finesse guy from Europe. When the Wild picked him there wasn't much objection due to the season he just had. On paper it was okay but there were apprehensions based on the 6-7 teams who passed on him.

10 hours ago, Protec said:

My thought was that center options were available at that time. Lundell was Koivu 2.0 and both Jarvis and Mercer were great skaters. These were the main guys we thought would be available at 9th. They were bit when Rossi dropped it wasn't too surprising because he is a smaller finesse guy from Europe. When the Wild picked him there wasn't much objection due to the season he just had. On paper it was okay but there were apprehensions based on the 6-7 teams who passed on him.

I assume the majority of that apprehension was just based on his size. The NHL loves their 6'+ 185+ lbs prospects high in the draft. And that's not Rossi. From what I recall from scouting profiles of that draft class, Rossi was a consensus top-3 C prospect and a top-5 talent overall in that draft.

Pronman was the only one that I recall to have him at the tail-end of his top-10. 

Sad that he falls into the mid-rounds in a re-draft but.. that's MN sports for you 😞

It's easy to say he shouldn't have been a top ten pick now and that he lands outside the top ten say 11-13th pick.

No one around his pick or after is setting the NHL on fire. I would imagine the Wild's stop gap plan at the time was he was a replacement for Fiala during cap hell.  Well, Plan A went over the boards and we're now resurfacing the ice with Plan B,C,D.

So far, we've benefitted from some diligent signings, some trades, key finds and not hurt by the pick too much. With our pipeline of prospects, you can't hit on them all. There's a lot of pressure from us fans to land "the pick", but sometimes that's hockey. 

Look no further than two top first round picks that cycled through our team in the last year in Steel and Jost. Do I want Rossi to work out, of course, if we give him a legit opportunity this year, awesome.  If he succeeds, even better, if not, I know there's a got to be a team out there for his style, say Montreal and we make a trade and get a return.

Moving on to a very experienced KHL Marat Khusnutdinov.

The comments about Rossi reflect the tone of the article. It seems to be generally slightly negative/defeatist. Rossi is 21 years old. He has had a tough run of luck and hasn't pushed through it as well as we all had oped. But, what if he soars this year? It could happen. Maybe the end of season appraisal from BG will make a difference. Small sized centers have succeeded before in the NHL. Heck, if memory serves me, Maurice and Henri Richard were smallish guys. I am going to take a positive view of Rossi until he proves me wrong. It is better for my mental health.

On 8/1/2023 at 7:42 AM, TCMooch said:

I mostly remember people being lukewarm for Anton Lundell at the time just because he was a standard 2way forward that was considered another safe Minnesota Wild pick.

I was not in that category. I was staunchly in the Lundell camp because I felt like his offense was better than reported. He was 2 years ahead of Koivu's stats, and had a similar game defensively. Lining Ek and Lundell up as 200' centers would have set this organization up for a long time. 

Now once Rossi was drafted, I supported the pick, but desperately wanted us to jump back into the 1st round and pick up Lundell too. Looks like I was right about his offense too. 

Redrafts are hard. Had we known about the myocarditis at the time of drafting him, I'm sure we would have gone after Lundell. But, nobody has that information going into the draft unless you can hire a crystal ball operator that is completely accurate. 

Rossi's size won't make him fail, if he fails it will be his attitude/mentality. Rossi was built solid at 5'9" 185 in his draft year. His highlights included quickness, shiftiness, hustle and a hounding of the puck. That was in jrs. We have yet to see this in the NHL, and only at the end of last season in the A. 

It would be expected that Rossi would have filled out to 195 by now, and while short, that is a nice wide base that's tough to knock off the puck. However, due to having to shut everything down for at least 6 months, I'm pretty sure Rossi lost a lot of muscle weight during that time. He's still building it back up. 

A player his size cannot be gliding, standing still and stick picking in the corners to be successful. A player his size needs to have the veracity of Shaw and trust his teammates to back him up. Dewar has that same thing. Rossi needs to find that inner lion and truly compete. 

Now, that said, I still would have preferred Lundell. I think his size translated better to the NHL game and teaming him up with Ek would have been really good down the middle. To me, what is perplexing is to take a chance on the smaller Rossi & come right back with Khus$%^&*. I would have thought that size would have mattered a little.

By the way, on the redraft, where did Khus^&*, O'Rourke, Hunt get redrafted? Or do they just do the 1st round?

Just looking at the stats of the 2020 players, Rossi is definitely below where you'd want, but a lot of those guys are struggling.