Team: 2023-24 Minnesota Wild

Initial Creation Date: Feb. 8, 2022

Published: Feb. 8, 2022

Salary Cap Mode: Basic

Almost through it! This year is harder to guess at because the draft picks in the 2022 draft may be ready to play but overall it’s probably a fair assessment of what the team might look like. It won’t let me create a 24/25 team yet so you’ll have to use your imagination that it says 24/25. It was tricky to account for players that will be RFAs that year so hopefully I didn’t screw anything up.
Forwards:
Rossi’s contract being in the last year of his ELC relies on him not playing in 10 games in 21/22 to remain slide eligible. It is critical that he is still on his ELC in 24/25. Losing Ryan Hartman as 1C at $1.7m hurts, but Rossi will have experience at this point and Khusnutdinov’s KHL deal expires so he can come over and play 3C which will help make the cap work. I extended Foligno because Guerin seems to love the guy and he’ll probably try to keep him at a slight pay raise over his current deal. Maybe Foligno takes less and Boldy gets a bit more for a 2 year deal but depending on his production in the next few years he may be taking short contracts with whatever raise the team can afford until he can finally get signed long-term in 25/26 when the Wild get $14m in dead cap back to work with.
Defense: same defense largely. If Addison shows he’s a legit top 4 guy, you can explore moving Dumba but who knows what Addison’s ceiling actually is. Lambos can be whichever defenseman was most ready in 23/24. O’Rourke can be the next up rotating on the 3rd pair with Merrill to get some games in.
Goalies: Wallstedt should be ready for backup duties, so the team can assess whether he looks ready to take over the net in 25/26.
LTIR players: these are players that will be UFAs and will not be kept due to cap space. In the case of Foligno I had to create a new player to make the cap work correctly.