Team: 2022-23 Minnesota Wild

Initial Creation Date: Jun. 16, 2022

Published: Jun. 16, 2022

Salary Cap Mode: Basic

Bill Guerin has been reading ACGM and folks? He's absolutely APPALLED at what you're offering. Roby Jarventie? GET OUTTA HERE! 13th overall? IN THIS MEDIOCRE DRAFT?

Full of rage and hubris, Bill has passed along to me his plan for keeping Kevin Fiala and doing his best to negotiate the buyout-filled waters of the next three years while still maintaining a decent squad.

MOVES!
-First, he gets Fiala down to $7M AAV by offering the 8th year that only he can.

-Now, needing to move some cap, he finds some movable guys. Lou Lamoriello throws up a 3rd rounder to get more LD depth in Dmitry Kulikov. Ron Francis was looking for veterans - Tyson Jost is technically one of those! Thanks for the 4th, Ronnie baby. The Maple Leafs need a new goalie to blame for next year's first round exit? Cam Talbot is cheaper than Jack Campbell will cost and all you gotta do is send over a 3rd! Wow, look at that - nearly $8M gone in a couple moves, and a few assets gathered for the future!

Now, let's fix some holes in this lineup.

-We have zero goalies! We fix this by signing MAF to an incentive-laden contract and hopefully push some bonus money to next year when it will be Future Bill's problem. If Eric Comrie wants more, there are other options to sign for a similar AAV - we want to give Hunter Jones and Jesper Wallstedt another year or two to develop before throwing them in the fire next season/the year after. We're also gonna give Jacob Middelton a bridge deal to play LD3 at $1.7M and bring in Austin Czarnik on a cheap deal to bring some balance to the wings.

LINES
Let's keep the top 9 the same - they did extremely well this season. Ain't broke? Don't fix.
I think using the 4th line as a chance to ease some younger guys into the lineup is going to be *extremely* important - you can shelter this line as much as possible but this team will need ELCs to replace guys like Freddie Gaudreau and Matt Dumba over the next couple seasons. Get their feet wet instead of throwing them into the fire in 2023-24, you know?

There's still some issues here and you're hoping a lot of things go right. But I think you can treat 2022-23 as a bridge year to the next wave of youth showing up in 2023-24 - Wallstedt splits time with an old MAF and hopefully learns some things; maybe O'Rourke or Lambos develop really well and can for Goligoski over to RD2 and fill in Dumba's spot in the D corp easily; and your goal is Marco Rossi stepping up in to that 2C slot that year and finding another player in the $1Mish range to fill in your bottom 6 C slot.

I think this works? Wild fans, tell me how far off I am.

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