The Minnesota Mild

Trading underachiever Mikael Grandlund to the Predators for Kevin Fiala was a good move at the time, and looks to be a good move now. I often cited Grandlund's poor WOWY stats on the old Wild board, and he had to go. That is really too bad because he is from Oulu Finland, and I have relatives there. I did originally want the Wild to draft Vladimir Tarasenko at 9 in 2010, and the Wild have paid for that miss for a decade. This trade was a win for the Wild.

Trading Charlie Coyle was a good call. I thought he was a middling player that had a high floor but a low ceiling. He looks fine on the ice for Boston, but his relative stats have been poor - just as they had been in Minnesota. Ryan Donato didn't do much for the Wild and has since been traded to the Sharks for a 3rd round pick in 2021. This trade is a push.

The trade I did not agree with at the time, and I still don't, is the trade of Nino Niederreiter to the Hurricanes for Victor Rask. I get that Rask was a center, and the Wild needed centers, but Rask had never been a great performer in the NHL. His WOWY stats are fine, but his skating skill and shot are not first line quality. Niederreiter, on the other hand, has always had good Corsi and Fenwick stats, and his relative WOWY stats have been superb.  Nino was one of my favorite Wild players, and trading him was a bad move then and a bad move now. If my opinion, if Nino was on the right wing with Kaprizov on the left, the Wild would likely have won their division, and the Knights would not be able to shadow and swarm Kirill in the offensive zone in the playoffs.