On Tuesday, we got a look inside the Minnesota Wild’s mindset post-free agency. The Athletic’s Michael Russo sat down with John Hynes to ask, among other things, So what happened to fixing that secondary scoring?
The Wild had long been expected to get a short-term winger to complement their top-six forward group. Whether that was via free agency with someone like David Perron or making a trade for someone like Patrik Laine, putting pucks in the net looked like the priority.
And it looks like it was — until it wasn’t. Here’s what Hynes said on how free agency
On Tuesday, we got a look inside the Minnesota Wild’s mindset post-free agency. The Athletic’s Michael Russo sat down with John Hynes to ask, among other things, So what happened to fixing that secondary scor The Wild had long been expected to get a short-term winger to complement their top-six forward group. Whether that was via free agency with someone like David Perron or making a trade for someone like Patrik Laine, putting pucks in the net looked like the priority.
And it looks like it was — until it wasn’t. Here’s what Hynes said on how free agency played out:
We needed to get a little bit bigger, a little bit stronger, a little bit faster, more pushback in our lineup. Maybe some guys that can aid in the penalty-killing element. Those were clearly things that needed to get better. We were able to execute that this summer. Would we like a top-six forward, some more secondary scoring? Sometimes those opportunities present themselves in the offseason, sometimes they don’t. But I think the most encouraging thing is that we were at least able to hit on one of the components that we were really looking to get better at.
Reading between the lines a bit: The secondary scoring market didn’t work out, so we went after Yakov Trenin to address an area of the team we could upgrade.
It appears true that the secondary scoring market was more than the Wild wanted to, or could (perhaps even should), have paid this offseason.
- Perron signed a two-year $4 million AAV contract with the Ottawa Senators.
- The Buffalo Sabres signed Wild legend Jason Zucker to a one-year, $5 million deal.
- The Edmonton Oilers landed Viktor Arvidsson on a two-year, $4 million AAV contract.
- Vladimir Tarasenko signed for two years at $4.25 million AAV with the Detroit Red Wings.
- Alex Wennberg went to the San Jose Sharks for two years, $5 million AAV…
played out:
