Now that the worst part of the Ryan Suter and Zach Parise buyouts is off the books, the Minnesota Wild finally have some salary-cap flexibility to work with and can build the team they want.
They still have $9 million in cap space this summer (with Marco Rossi’s RFA situation still looming) and could still probably afford to make some sort of a splash in the trade market.
The Wild kind of fizzled in the second half last season, but a lot of that was due to some significant injuries at both forward and defense. When they were healthy in the first half of the season, they were one of the best teams in the Western Conference. They have the potential to be that again with better health luck.
The Wild would also be a fascinating trade partner for the Penguins, mostly because they have one of the NHL’s best and deepest farm systems and could probably make an offer for Rakell (or Bryan Rust) that nobody else in the league would be able to match.
Minnesota finished the 2024-25 season near the foot of the league in goals scored (25th), and while injuries to Kirill Kaprizov and Joel Eriksson Ek played a role in that poor ranking, it’s still a team that could use another finisher at the top of its lineup.
