2013 Hockey Day Minnesota Announcement

Today, on their Wild Road Tour, the Minnesota Wild announced their matchups for the 2013 Hockey Day Minnesota, which will take place in Grand Rapids.

It will once again feature three high school games (2 played live, and one on tape delay), and they will be played on Pokegama Lake in Grand Rapids. Those games are as follows: Eagan vs Hibbing, Benilde St. Margaret's vs Grand Rapids, Hibbing vs Grand Rapids (Girls, also on tape delay).

The college game features the University of Minnesota and the University of North Dakota in their final meeting as WCHA rivals (Minnesota moves to the Big 10 conference the following year).

And capping off the night will be the Wild taking on the NHL's favorite franchise, the Pittsburgh Penguins in what should be a very good matchup (Assuming of course Zach Parise doesn't sign with Pittsburgh. Knock on wood!).

The times will be announced at a later date. All games will be broadcast on FSN North (Ugh!).

Wild Draft Recap: Rounds 2-7

In surprisingly the same amount of time it took to go through the first round last night, the NHL finished up the final 6 rounds of the annual entry draft this morning. The Wild held a pick in every round this morning and in every round but the second, it was the 7th pick of the round (The second round pick was 16th in the round, which was acquired in the Marek Zidlicky trade). Here is the list of players the Wild drafted today:

2. Raphael Bussieres LW Baie-Comeau (QMJHL)
3. John Draeger D Shattuck-St. Mary's (MN)
4. Adam Gilmour C Nobles (MA)
5. Daniel Gunnarsson D Lulea (Sweeden)
6. Christoph Bertschy C Bern (Swiss)
7. Louis Nanne LW Edina HS (MN)

Add the first round pick Matt Dumba to that list, and you have 3 defenseman taken with the first 5 picks in the draft. So clearly, there was more of an emphasis on that position for Chuck Fletcher and his staff.

Its far too early to grade this draft. It will take quite some time before we know the answer on any of these picks, so judging any of them would be a complete waste of time right now.

I've already seen some negativity regarding the team's final pick, Louis Nanne (Yes, the grandson of former North Star Lou Nanne). People seem to think the team picked him just to say we have some Minnesota players in our system. Come on folks, be real. The team drafted him, and all these players because they felt they were the best player available on the board. Quit making such idiotic remarks.

Now that the draft is over, we now look ahead to 8 days from now when NHL Free Agency begins. Its the day we all have been waiting for, but will it be as glamorous as we all hoped?

Wild Select Matt Dumba

Tonight, with the 7th overall pick, the Minnesota Wild drafted defenseman Matt Dumba from the Red Deer Rebels of the Western Hockey League. Dumba scored 20 goals and added 37 assists in his 2011-12 season with Red Deer. He projects to be a #1 defenseman with great offensive skills. But obviously, he will be 2-3 years away from actually suiting up in the iron range red.

The Dumba selection came as no surprise to me. I was slightly hoping they would take F Flip Forsberg, who had fallen to the Wild at #7 (and eventually fell to Washington at #11), or if they truly wanted a d-man go with the more physical Jacob Trouba. But, Chuck Fletcher stuck to his guns, and chose Dumba.

The decision to go with Dumba fills a hole in the Wild system. They lack a high offensive upside defenseman in their system, and their NHL roster for that matter.

So all in all, I am pleased with Chuck Fletcher's decision to draft Matt Dumba.

Welcome to the Team of 18,001, Matt Dumba!

Draft Links

Tonight, NHL commissioner Gary Bettman will step to the podium at Consol Energy Center just after 6 PM and kick off the 2012 NHL Draft. Everyone wants to know who will Edmonton take #1? Will Rick Nash, Bobby Ryan, and/or Roberto Luongo be traded tonight? Well, in just a few hours, our questions will be answered.

• Instead of trying to cram one last post in before the draft, I figured I would just throw out some links from some other blogs as to how the Wild will approach this draft. 

• Hockey Wilderness looks at the history of the 7th overall pick. 

• Jacques Lemaire's Trap goes through the possible players the Wild could select with the 7th pick tonight.

• First Round Bust gets some of the Wild blogosphere together to tell you who they would like to see drafted (Yours truly is one of the bloggers to speak in this piece).

• Russo chimed in today with his pre-draft thoughts. 

• Grant Sonier posted his final mock draft for ESPN.com. He has Murray going #1 to Edmonton, Ceci to the Wild.

I will be heading out to Tom Reid's for the Wild Draft party later tonight. Should be a good time. I will have a post up upon my return (unless I go nuts at the bar :D), recapping the first round and the Wild's pick tonight.

Wild Announce 2012-13 Schedule

Today, the Wild, along with the rest of the NHL, announced their schedule for the 2012-13 regular season. The Wild are slated to open up their season at home against Colorado on Saturday, October 13th at 7 PM.

There are some ups and downs to this schedule. First, Nate from First Round Bust (Give his post on the Wild Schedule a read too!) pointed out to me that there are no 9:30 division road games this year. So when the Wild travel to Vancouver they will be starting no later than 9:00. Its not that big of a difference, but its an extra half hour so everyone wins.

Another positive to this year's schedule is that the Eastern Canadian teams (Maple Leafs, Canadiens, and Senators) all make appearances to Xcel Energy Center. The Leafs and Canadiens aren't exactly the gold standard of the NHL right now, but they have rarely visited St. Paul, so it is nice to see them come here.

But, the schedule does have some downfalls. The biggest being that Winnipeg (The Wild's new found rival) does not make a visit to St. Paul this year. The Wild do travel up to Manitoba on January 2nd, but the schedule was not so kind in sending the Jets back to Minnesota.

That is just about as big as a fail as you will ever see. I had the pleasure of being at the Wild-Jets game at the 'X' back in February. The building was packed, there were close to 3-4,000 Jets fans in the building, and the atmosphere was second to none for a regular season game that was almost meaningless. Hopefully, this issue will be fixed for future years (Or actually, the divisions realign like we all wanted and we play the Jets 6 times a year!!!).

You could make the same argument for East Coast teams like New York Rangers, Boston, and New Jersey not coming to St. Paul this year. It really does become kind of a drag to see the same useless West teams (Edmonton, Columbus) over and over again, and the better teams in the league we don't get to see.

Lastly, should the Wild be in contention late in the year, the schedule is definitely not in their favor. In April, the team plays their first 5 games in the month on the road against teams that are more than likely to contend (Chicago, San Jose, Colorado, Phoenix, Detroit) before playing the final two games at home. It will be rough, but lets hope the team is still in contention at that point (knock on wood!).


P.S. For those looking for a road trip opportunity this year (Much like I am), some good options would be Boston/New York Rangers November 8-10 or LA/Anaheim on December 8-9. Or one oculd simply just drive 7 hours north and see the Wild play the Jets!

Draft Day Trades

Last year, Chuck Fletcher stole the show at the NHL Draft when he shipped D-Man Brent Burns to San Jose for Devin Setoguchi, Charlie Coyle, and the 28th pick (Wild chose Zack Phillips with that pick) in the draft.

It was simply the trade everyone was talking about. The draft is always good for a blockbuster trade during the first round. And you should expect nothing less than that during the first round of the 2012 Draft on Friday night.

But as we prepare for the 2012 draft, it would appear the Wild will be standing pat in the first round, and will keep their pick at #7. Russo has mentioned in his blog recently and his chat today, he has indicated that the Wild has no plans to make a trade on draft night or for that matter, make a trade in the near distant future.

The team seems to have more valuable assets and they are locked in to keeping them. So what this suggests, is that the only real major roster changes for 2012-13 will be the players Fletcher signs during Free Agency.

So Friday night, sit back, watch the Wild pick at #7, and wait for Rick Nash, Jordan Staal, and/or Roberto Luongo (perhaps?) to be dealt at the draft tables. It will be once again, fun to watch.

Wild Re-sign Harding

Surprisingly today, the Minnesota Wild announced that they have re-signed, free agent to be, Josh Harding to a 3 year deal worth $5.7 million ($1.9 million annual cap hit). The news was rather surprising as Harding was expected to test the free agent market, and see if he could land himself a starting gig, but instead he took the safe route and opted to back up Niklas Backstrom for at least one more year.

Harding has spent the the past 7 seasons in a Wild sweater (6 for those not counting 2010-11 when he missed the entire year with injury), and his contract will make him the longest tenured goalie in team history.

At first, the move struck me as curious. Why pay Harding almost 2 million dollars to back up Backstrom for a year, then see if he can remain the starter once Matt Hackett comes up to replace Backstrom's roster spot?

But, after a few hours to chew on it (and a conversation with Nate from First Round Bust), I figured that the team will rely on Harding to be the #1 starter once Backstrom leaves and it will allow the goalies in the system (Hackett, Darcy Kuemper, and Johan Gustafsson) to develop more before they get tossed between the pipes at Xcel Energy Center.

So all in all, I am on board with this decision, despite Harding's injury history (Lets hope that's gone!). When healthy, he can be a solid #1 goalie.

So for those keeping your offseason to do checklist at home, cross off back up goalie from the list...

Top 5 Wild Draft Moments

As we kick off draft week, I thought we would take a look back and countdown the top 5 moments in the Wild's draft history. It was a bit hard to find five given the team's success in the draft between 2004-2009 (Not good!), but we did find 5. Here they are:

5. 2002: Wild draft Pierre-Marc Bouchard 8th overall. Before a concussion took away parts or most of the last 3 seasons, Bouchard was rapidly making his way up the Wild all time scoring charts. Even with the injuries Bouchard is the franchise's leader in games played with 522. He has been a tremendous 2nd line forward with great hands and his ability to set up goals. His 229 career assists rank just second to Mikko Koivu, and had he not been injured he would for sure be #1 in team history in assists.

4. 2001: Wild draft Mikko Koivu 6th overall. Since the Wild drafting him in 2001, Mikko Koivu has become the team's 2nd highest all time scorer (Behind Marian Gaborik), he was named the first permanent captain in club history in 2009, and has undoubtedly become the face of the franchise. Like Bouchard, Koivu has a tremendous ability to set up goals, but has been known to make some highlight goals for himself from time to time. Koivu ranks 3rd all time in goals (108), 2nd in assists (253), and 2nd in points (361). Mikko is locked in under contract through the 2017-18 season so expect him to be leaders in those categories before his time is up here.

3. 2011: Wild trade Brent Burns and a 2012 2nd round pick to San Jose for Devin Setoguchi, Charlie Coyle, and the 28th overall pick. (Zack Phillips). It was just about a foregone conclusion that the Wild were going to trade Brent Burns during the 2011 offseason. It just so happened that he got traded on draft night, which was held right here in St. Paul. The Wild became immediate winners in this trade getting a young forward in Setoguchi, and two top prospects in Coyle and Phillips. Both of them are beginning their entry level contracts with the team in 2012-13. Look for this trade to go down as one of the best in franchise history.

2. 2006: Wild trade Patrick O'Sullivan and the 17th overall pick (Trevor Lewis) to Los Angeles for Pavol Demitra. During the 2006 offseason, then Wild GM Doug Risebrough made it a point to acquire some talent under a "Win Now" philosophy. So one of his first moves was bringing in the Slovakian center Demitra, to line up along side good friend Marian Gaborik. They were undoubtedly the best line duo in the team's short history. In the two seasons together, Demitra (40-78-118) and Gaborik (72-68-140) helped the team to two playoff appearances and the team's lone division championship.

1. 2000: Wild draft Marian Gaborik 3rd overall. He became the first player in the history of the franchise. He still sits atop many offensive categories in franchise history including goals (219) and points (437). There has been no better offensive player in the team's history, and his presence is still missed in the lineup to this day. Gaborik was a big help in the team's playoff run in 2003, scoring 9 goals and 8 assists in 18 games played.

Draft Week

Hope everyone had a wonderful Father's Day weekend. But as we put that behind us, we look forward to the next major event in the NHL offseason: The NHL Draft.

The draft will take place on Friday and Saturday (22nd-23rd) at the Consol Energy Center in Pittsburgh. The Wild currently hold the 7th pick in the draft (Behind Edmonton, Columbus, Montreal, New York Islanders, Toronto, and Anaheim), the highest they have picked since 2005 when they took Benoit Pouliot 4th overall. 

This past weekend, I dove into many mock drafts and scouting reports, and will be posting frequently throughout the week on draft related things. Should news come up in other aspects of the organization, I will of course be posting about them, but this will be mainly draft posts. 

So please keep checking back throughout the week!!

(Also keep checking out the Hockey Wilderness and First Round Bust blogs for great draft content as well!)

Suter Watch: Extension Talks Over?

On June 1st, Josh Cooper of the Tennessean reported that Nashville GM David Poille went out to Wisconsin and met with Ryan Suter on starting talks for a contract extension. The talks reportedly went well, and there was optimism that the Preds were going to be able to get a deal done to keep Suter in town.

Now two weeks later, Cooper wrote in his blog that there has been very little happening with Suter since those talks. He raises the question where the talks are today, and that Suter could very well just test the free agent market since he has come this far without getting a deal done. 

Also in Cooper's post, he mentioned that Nashville could trade Suter's rights to another team so they do not walk way empty handed in the event Suter does sign elsewhere this summer. This is something that Mike Russo has suggested the Wild would try and trade for the rights of Suter and Zach Parise if extension talks fail. The Wild have a lot of cap space, so if they were to acquire the rights of Suter there would be much optimism that a deal would be reached.

A decision on whether the Preds decide to trade the rights of Suter may come sooner rather than later due to the fact the Preds talks with other potential free agents appear to be held up until they get Suter's situation resolved, as Cooper points out in his post today. 

So if Ryan Suter doesn't have an extension in place by the draft, look for his rights to possibly be traded shortly after.


Here is the link to my first post in the Suter Watch series: Is there a chance?