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Tampa Lightning Legend Steven Stamkos heads for Nashville on a four year deal.

MOUNT ROYAL  – The NHL 2024 Entry Draft and the opening of the Free Agency signing period were less than 72 hours from each other. 

Last week I highlighted the Minnesota Wild’s first-round pick Zeev Buium. Many analysts believed he was the steal of the round. In fact, one article I came across listed Buium as a “loser” in one of those winner-loser stories about the draft and in the next paragraph had the Wild as “winners” regarding this selection. 

Since Buium was considered a potential top-five pick in the draft, the fact that he fell to the Wild at twelfth was apparently unsettling to some scribes covering the event. 

Instead of focusing on the player’s assets, they focused on his downside, which is that he isn’t a 200 lb.-plus bruiser. I believe that as he physically matures he will eventually get to 200 lbs. or so and it doesn’t bother me that he isn’t some 230 lb. scrapper. 

This kid’s skill set will amaze many Wild and NHL fans as he grows into his spot on the team and in the league. He is going to become an excellent player.

To round out the club’s draft selections the team also selected in the second round, 45th overall, 6 ‘1’’ forward Ryder Ritchie from the WHL Prince Albert team. He played on the Team Canada U18 team at the IIHF 2024 tourney and is listed as a skilled offensive threat. 

In the fourth round at 122nd overall the team drafted Aron Kiviharju, a skilled defenseman from Finland. He played for Finland at the IIHF U18 tournament and is an excellent puck-rushing defender with excellent speed.  

In the fifth round at 140th overall, the club picked a defenseman from Finland, Sebastian Soini. At 6’2”-187 lbs. he is an excellent skater and two-way defender. He played in one of the Finnish professional leagues last season. 

The Wild selected goaltender Chase Wutzke in the fifth at 142nd overall. Wutzke played in the WHL last year for the Red Deer Rebels. At 6’2”-161 lbs. he has some room on his frame for additional weight and strength. His attributes are his quickness and athleticism. He posted career numbers for the Rebels of a 3.00 GA average and a .898 Sv%. 

Rounding out the draft for the Wild was their sixth and final pick of the day with Steve Leskovar, a 6’4”-207 lb. defenseman from the Mississauga Steelheads of the OHL. He has a heavy shot from the back end and brings a physical presence when on the ice. 

Overall I feel the team added quite a bit of quality to their prospect pool with these selections. I can see both Buium and Ritchie in the National at some point in the future, and the confidence that Kiviharju has in himself and his game should serve him well. I say that because when the Wild selected him, he leaned into GM Bill Guerin and whispered to him that he had just made a “great” choice. OK, show us what you have kid. 

As for the remainder of the club picks, they are all very young and have a lot of development in front of them. I’d say that overall the team had a productive draft...

Free Agent signing day is a totally different beast. Most analysts don’t view the Wild as having had a very good day or week in that regard. 

One of the first signing day summaries I read gave the Wild a solid “D.” For close followers of the team and some of the more serious Wild fans, we already expected as much. 

The team is still wearing the salary cap penalty handcuffs that Guerin placed upon it and himself with the Parise-Suter buyouts. At this time there is no value in relitigating that whole disaster, so I won’t. 
Needless to say, the team was seriously handicapped at the beginning of the day.  

Guerin did sign forward Yakov Trenin (6’2”-201 lbs.) to a 4-year, $14 mil deal. Trenin will replace some of the toughness that was lost with the departures of Ryan Reeves and Pat Maroon, but he is not a true heavyweight power forward. 

I struggle with the dollars and term given to him. With a career average of .274 PPG, he is marginal offensively. With Trenin’s salaries in his 9 seasons in the league totaling around $9 mil, I can only believe that Guerin vastly overpaid for this player. 

So what’s new?

Guerin spent the remainder of whatever cap space the team had on loading up the Iowa Wild roster with several players on two-way contracts. Defenseman Jake Middleton got a new deal for $17.4 mil in 4 years with an annual hit of $4.35 mil. This deal kicks in for the 2025-26 season. I like “Middsie.” He is one of those heart and soul players, he plays a hard-nosed game and by the last third of every season, he seems to be banged up a bit, but plays through it. 

But once again I am left to wonder if Guerin overpaid for him too. Monday’s moves have left the team with less than $1.0 mil in projected cap space. 

So, what we see is what we get. Some clubs approach the free agent signing period with total seriousness and a hard-core plan to reach their objectives. And for some teams in the Western Conference that’s exactly what they did. 

The futility of the Wild’s current positioning was amplified by what a few clubs did on Monday the 1st. On top of that, I came across a divisional projection on social media that has projected the Wild to finish 2nd in the Central with 102 points on the season. Yikes! 

If the hockey Gods are kind to the team this year and the hockey moon and stars are properly aligned, I could say maybe. But in taking an objective look at it, I can’t see it. 

In my quick view, the Wild’s top-six forward group might barely make the top 10 in the league. The bottom six are definitely in the middle. 

For the D-corps, the group ranked toward the bottom of the league, and even with the return of Captain Jared Spurgeon I’m not certain they will elevate much this year in that regard. 

Between the pipes what does the team really have here? I’m willing to give “Gus the Bus” a “brand new dad” side note for last year’s underwhelming performance. I feel that it took some of his game focus away. 

This year? No excuses Filip. Slotted backup tender Marc Andre Fleury is aging and has lost at least half a step. That’s not his fault, it’s a simple athlete life span chronology at work. 

There are other factors at play here, but I just do not see a 2nd place divisional finish for this group.
In the West on Monday, the Nashville Predators may have had the biggest day. They were followed by the Blackhawks, San Jose and Seattle in my opinion. With other teams losing more than they gained, Dallas, Colorado, Las Vegas and the Kings, they will all take a step back. This will create a reshuffling of the Western Conference power structure. 

I can’t wait for the season to start! PEACE