NHL Rumor Roundup: What Next For The Wild? How Will Stars Fit In Robertson's Next Contract?
The Minnesota Wild face some important roster decisions as they head into the off-season, while the Dallas Stars could make a cost-cutting trade or two to free up salary-cap room for Jason Robertson's next contract.
Video Transcript
I'm Lyle Richardson of the Hockey News.
In today's NHL Rumor Roundup column, one of the topics I'm looking at is what the offseason might hold for the Minnesota Wild.
Now, the Wild entered this postseason seemingly on the verge of opening their Stanley Cup window at long last.
After all, their offense is led by superstars Kirill Kaprizov and Matt Boldy.
They have a defense corps that was anchored by superstar blue liner Quinn Hughes, and they had solid goaltending with the tandem of Philip Gustafson and Jesper Walstad.
However, while they made it past the first round for the first time in 10 years, the Colorado Avalanche slammed shut their Stanley Cup window by eliminating them in five games from the second round.
Now, ESPN's Ryan S. Clark believes that Wild general manager Bill Guerin is going to have a busy summer because he's going to have to try and balance which of his potential unrestricted free agents he's going to bring back with trying to find a sufficient center for his top six forwards.
And he only has 13 and a half million in cap space to do it with.
Now, the main number of his pending unrestricted free agents include such veterans as Matt Zuccarello, Vladimir Tarasenko, Marcus Johansson, and Nick Foligno.
Now, all of them could be affordable re-signings if Guerin decides to bring them back.
But by doing so, that will eat into that valuable cap space that he needs to go after a second line center.
And hovering over all of this is the future of Quinn Hughes because he will be UFA eligible next summer.
And the question is, is he willing to sign a contract extension with rumors suggesting that he might prefer going to join the New Jersey Devils and his brothers Jack and Luke when he becomes a UFA next July?
