Insider: Matt Dumba Made Huge Mistake Going to Coyotes

"The Minnesota Wild did not receive one single phone call... inquiring about (Matt Dumba)'s availability at the trade deadline." NHL Insider Frank Seravalli dropped that bit of intel while on Sportsnet 590 radio Tuesday morning. 

Seravalli says that teams "don't like his risk profile." He also notes that part of the lack of interest in Dumba at the time was his cap hit ($6M) and part of it was that he'd been a healthy scratch at the time. And yet, the Insider notes that Dumba still didn't get the message, and badly misread the free agent market this summer. 

All of those signs should have been adding up to, this is a guy that is not going to be very well received on the market.

So when Dumba finally inked a one-year, $3.9M deal with the Arizona Coyotes last week, Seravalli can't help but think the blueliner made a huge mistake.

I think what would have been a smart decision... would be to go somewhere, like Oliver Ekman-Larsson did, go to a really good team like Florida, take a little bit less money—you've already had some really good paydays—and try and rebuild your game on a team with a lot of support and structure.

Seravalli likens Dumba's style to somewhat of "a kamikaze pilot": 

"If he gets you in the neutral zone, look out—he will absolutely take your head off. But if he misses, it's a huge opportunity the other way... He needs to reshape his game and reboot himself."

And while he likes what Arizona has done this summer, the thought is that Dumba would have been better served for his next foray into unrestricted free agency next offseason if he'd been able to work on remaking his game on "a better team" with "more support" this season. 

Dumba had a big offensive dropoff last year, with 14 points in 79 games, while registering a minus-8 with the Wild. 

Photo: Jerome Miron-USA TODAY Sports