A selection: "For a team to make tangible changes, though, it needs flexibility. The Wild have none.
Squat. That’s just a fact. Plain and simple.
Now, that’s partly due to one final year of $14.7 million in dead money plus another $425,000 cap overage for Marco Rossi hitting performance bonuses (plus potentially another $212,500 if Rossi makes the all-rookie team later this month). It’s also partly due to the long list of no-move and no-trade clauses that president of hockey operations and general manager Bill Guerin has handed out. (Like even Freddy Gaudreau somehow has a 15-team no-trade list.) And it’s partly because the players who could be moved in a nanosecond are players Guerin would have no interest in moving.
So that leaves only a handful of trade options, which is why you keep hearing Marco Rossi’s name out there.
However, as you’ll read in this “Who stays, who goes?” piece, as of now, trading the hard-working, very talented youngster seems unlikely unless it’s a total no-brainer. The impression we get after recent staff meetings is that Guerin is less inclined to shop Rossi over the next three weeks aggressively. Now, if somebody calls up and offers him a deal that’s too good to pass up, anything’s possible."
by PaxDragoon
2 Comments
It pains me to saw that I think that Rossi is going to get traded. Here me out before the downvotes. Ek is a good 1st line center, however I really think he’s at his best on a shut down line and second PP/PK. I would like to see him moved back to a checking line. If you move Rossi up to a first line position, I think he’s too small and gets pushed around. If Ek’s line is considered your 2nd. This would put him onto a third line which doesn’t really make sense either.
End of the day I would listen to all trades and I’m not getting rid of him for a bag of pucks. However long term, I’m struggling to make him fit.
We should have been in a fire sale last this season and next… now we are handcuffed into not making any moves that could improve us long term. How sweet would it have been to get real draft capital for zucc, foligno and Hartman this year and have a top 5 pick instead of middle of the pack and not even having the opportunity to to get swept in the first round. Billy should have the nest experience in the league right now about shitty contracts and what they can do and here we are continuing with the long standing tradition of being consistently in the middle with nor real end in site. Seems like we are going to be losing promising young talent to keep roster spots for over paid 4th liners.
Who knows. Maybe we get lucky next year and get the 12th pick in the draft that we can use on a forward we won’t see until Kap is a New York Ranger.