Minnesota Wild's Worst Trade Of The Past Year

The Minnesota Wild are a team like no other with the salary cap. They had quite a bit to work with this season despite allotting nearly $13 million to past buyouts. At the trade deadline this season they used the cap space they had to take on money as a third party. This didn't allow them to get very good deadline acquisitions after the two contracts were partially taken on. Seeing how the Wild are now in first in their division, they have a real shot at going deep in the postseason and weren't able to properly bolster their team.

Instead of addressing the center position by adding a top-six center, the Wild used a fair amount of cap space to bring in John Klingberg. Though the price was low to acquire the offensive defenceman, the Wild's defence is full and Klingberg serves the same purpose as young Calen Addison who is having just as good of a season offensively.

Even though the Anaheim Ducks retained half of Klingberg's salary, he still has a cap hit of $3.5 million and is now injured. Klingberg was brought in to help on the power play, but Addison has done a solid job of that with 18 power-play assists this season. The need for a center when there were quite a few available outweighed adding Klingberg, and that's what makes this trade the Wild's worst of the past year.