Down and out: A glance at the Wild’s tough offseason ahead

Several teams will be busy this upcoming offseason, and among those will be general manager Bill Guerin’s Minnesota Wild. The Wild, of course, were one of the busiest teams at the NHL trade deadline, acquiring elite-level goaltender and future Hall-of-Famer Marc-Andre Fleury from the Chicago Blackhawks, as well as a mixture of skill and grit with the additions of Tyson Jost, Nic Deslauriers and Jacob Middleton. Poised for a deep playoff run, the Wild, unfortunately, were eliminated in the first round after struggling against a dominant St. Louis Blues team.

Now, the Wild are faced with a number of contracts that are expiring, most importantly that of restricted free agent Kevin Fiala. They are also faced with a crisis between the pipes, and the Wild will need to figure out if they can bring Fleury back.

Tyler Yaremchuk and Mike McKenna continued the Down and Out series on The Daily Faceoff Show, looking into the Wild’s offseason plans, whether Fiala will return and how they will tackle their goalie controversy.

Tyler Yaremchuk: Another team facing a very interesting offseason is the Minnesota Wild. They are now up to $12.6 million in dead cap space with the contracts of [Ryan] Suter and [Zach] Parise. A couple of areas I want to go over with you, the first one is … Cam Talbot. He’s under contract, and Marc-Andre Fleury is an unrestricted free agent. How do you see the goalie situation playing out between the pipes in Minny?

Mike McKenna: Well, they need another one. Kaapo Kahkonen was shipped off to the San Jose Sharks at the deadline, so you’re looking at Cam Talbot and, well, Cam Talbot. Would you like to bring Marc-Andre Fleury back? Yeah, absolutely! But you cant do it for a big dollar figure, especially with the cap crunch the Wild are facing, Tyler. I like this combination of goaltenders. I think Talbot has been underrated and under-appreciated, really, I think with Minnesota during his time there. I think they could work well together, but man if you’re going to bring Fleury in, it can’t be for big dollars. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Fleury not come back, but I also look at the cap space of the club, Tyler, and take a look at this man: There are a lot of RFAs, aren’t there?

Tyler Yaremchuk: Well, yeah, there are a bunch of interesting things going on here. OK, $7.3 million, that might not be enough to sign the top guy on this list, Kevin Fiala. Like that right there is another huge question for their offseason. A guy who has had a tremendous season and been a pretty consistent producer, he’s going to want a raise. I know he has arb rights. That’s probably decision No. 1 even before they get to goaltending – figuring out what they are doing with Kevin Fiala because that’s going to determine how much money they are going to spend on anything else. They are going to have to move out some contracts if they want to keep Fiala and do all the other necessary work. But do you agree that Fiala is probably the first thing that Bill Guerin needs to check off his checklist?

Mike McKenna: I think they just need to decide, are you keeping Kevin Fiala or not? He went missing for the first half of the season and went missing in the first half of the playoffs. This is a big-time player, I understand his points are big, but these are question marks, and when you have this big of a cap crunch, you really have to think about it. If you’re Minnesota you’re also facing down that Matt Dumba needs a contract in a year, and that will be a big one, Matthew Boldy is going to need one, Frederick Gaudreau, there’s a lot of pieces that need it. I almost think that Billy Guerin is going to have to choose between keeping around Fiala or keeping around Dumba because I don’t see how you keep both of those two into the future with this cap hit. It’s going to be tough for him to make this decision, but without a doubt in my mind, Minnesota is going to have to trim a little fat around the edges here in order to retain any of these young players.

Tyler Yaremchuk: Yeah, and that dead cap space by the way only goes up again next summer. It goes up another $2 million to just over $14 million, so it’s not going to get any easier for Bill Guerin. The good thing is they got a couple of interesting contracts there like a Ryan Hartman or Matt Boldy. If I had to put a percentage on Fiala, and this is just my opinion, I think there’s a 10 percent chance he’s back with the Wild next season. You mention how he kind of disappears for some spurts. I don’t know if that’s the type of player you want to pay $8 million. If you can find a way to flip Fiala for another good young player on a good contract, maybe not quite as proven, maybe you have to take a little bit of a risk, kind of like you did when you flipped [Mikael] Granlund for Fiala, you got to take a bit of risk, but there’s a chance you can find yourself with a good contract that really helps you navigate the next couple of seasons, right?

Mike McKenna: I agree with you, Tyler, and I think you’re also looking at Boldy to take that next step. I mean this is a guy who has a massive skill set who is just scratching the surface. Can he be even better than Kevin Fiala and at a more manageable cap hit for the next several years? I think so. I’m pretty sure that’s what Bill Guerin is looking at as well and wondering.

Tyler Yaremchuk: Yeah, they’ve got another couple of intriguing prospects in their system as well. It will be fascinating to see how Minnesota navigates through what will be a tough offseason with huge question marks. That’s going to do it for our Down and Out for the day.

You can watch the full episode here…