Minni is not going to be good this year..

MN shouldn't touch that trade.

who said they were? they'll be fkn terrible but the calder will be a cakewalk : )

They don't have to be good. They just better than the rest of the junk in the West. The 4th Playoff spot is a complete tossup that anyone of those teams could take.

Aha fingers crossed

That's true, I guess it's there for the taking

Something tells me that rolling with Cam Talbot and Alex Stalock as your goalie tandem, and Bjugstad as your 1C isn't going to help them be better than the rest of the junk in the West...

It's training camp with lots of new faces in the FWDs. Lots of unknowns on how players will fit with each other, try different things and see how it shakes out is all they an really do right now.

Talbot has to be an improvement over Dub from last year. Goalie KK looks to be the backup to start the season, he could boom or bust until Stalock gets healthy. I'm not too concerned about the goalies, they just need to be average, not the bloody awful pair MN had last year in net.

Eriksson Ek > Roslovic
Addison > Niku

At least you got the Calder winner right

If you know what you are talking about, you would know stalock is out for the year

Montreal Canadiens fan saying this? Haha

Ah, f**k me and the OP then. Your depth at centre is fixed, and Talbot should win the Vezina. Cheers to you for being smarter than everyone else. Have a lovely day.

Not going to sit here and tell you the Wild centers are great, but the only departure is Staal, who was a shell of his former self last year. He's not good defensively and offensively he's an average 2C. Bonino outscored him 5v5 last season, so the drop off really isn't that severe. Combine that with the fact that Eriksson Ek should improve, Sturm/Rask is a better 4C than Koivu, and Bjugstad/Johansson should be more than enough to cover the hole from Galchenyuk leaving. At worst, the offense is going to be the same. At best, with Fiala improving and Kaprizov joining, it's going to improve.

The Wild also have one of the top defensive units in the league, ranking very close to, or at the top in metrics like HDSCA and xGA. The problem was our goalie tandem for a large part of the season was the absolute worst in the league, statistically. With league average goaltending last year, which is what Talbot is expected to provide (not Vezina caliber), the Wild would have been third in the central.

I know it's fun to bash the Wild for not having any high end flashy centers, but it sure is a really good thing there's more to success than having the best centers. No one is mistaking the Wild for Cup contenders, but neither are they a basement dwelling team.

both of those are debatable, glad you contributed tho : )

Lol alright if youre so confident, you wanna place a wager on it? Or do u not have the balls to put any real money where your mouth is 😯

Eriksson Ek is undoubtedly better than Roslovic. That one isn't debatable.

Not really.

Niku looks to be a bust, while Addison still has top 4 potential. Therefore Addison > Niku.

Roslovic is still an intriguing prospect, but I'd take Eriksson-Ek over him any day of the week. Why? Because Eriksson-Ek is currently one of the best young defensive centers in the league vs a young player that has some good upside but is entirely an unknown at this point. As of right now, Eriksson-Ek is > than Roslovic.

So a 7th rounder that has played less then 50 games to date is a bit of a bust to you? Interesting take.

And although JE-E is a good young defensive center, there's no chance in hell he is "one of the best". Roslo is by no means a defensive center, but he has been extremely underused and I have no doubt he will have a much greater impact once his trade demand requests are met.

If only you hadn't gone totally MIA on this @Wildnochance, it cld have been interesting right about now..!