NHL Rumors: Wild Working On Trade, Could Resort To Signing Free Agent Forward

Bill Guerin is hard at work trying to bring in a forward via the trade market but may very well have to resort to the remaining crop of free agents to bolster the team per Michael Russo of The Athletic. With the loss of Kevin Fiala, that leaves 85 points and a lot of skill that needs to be made up if the team hopes to remain a strong competitor.

The Wild are paying only three forwards more than $5 million next season, so even though a couple of forwards are underpaid right now, there is still lots of room to improve if they ever want to get over the hump. The problem here is that the team has $12.7 million stuck in dead cap due to the buyouts of Zach Parise and Ryan Suter next season and over $14.7 for the two seasons that follow.

Behind the scenes of the #mnwild’s stunning buyout of Parise and Suter, and what is next

STORY>> https://t.co/mq5yqKE3vD
— Michael Russo (@RussoHockey) July 13, 2021

The dead cap makes it very tough to add the necessary talent to be a top competitor considering that much cap would be able to bring in a couple of very solid players at any position.

The strongest area of the Wild is their defense, so this is what makes it likely one of them will be on the move. There has been conversation for a while about the prospect of moving Matt Dumba. The team got a very nice surprise with Alex Goligoski and Dmitri Kulikov last season performing offensively and defensively, but the most important reason is prospect Calen Addison is a right defense like Dumba and can replace him in the lineup for cheap.

Guerin is likely looking for a player on the trade market that has a similar cap hit to Dumba since the Wild must use every bit of cap they have. We will see if he can pull something off or he will have to dip into what is left on the free agent market for next to nothing cap-wise.