1. On Dubnyk and Granlund, he’ll begin communication with them so he has a good sense of what they’ll cost heading into the organizational meetings.
He believes Dubnyk will get done in time: “It was a pretty good fit for both parties.â€
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Now, maybe Dubnyk takes less to stay in a place where he was a solid fit, but this was a $3.75 million goalie in Edmonton. For the Wild to sign him, the deal will obviously average well north of $3 million per.
The final figure will depend on term. Give him three years, the average salary/cap hit is probably more. Give him four or five years, and the Wild can probably get the average salary/cap hit to a more comfortable number. Two years makes little sense to me. 1) Why would he take two years? 2) Two years basically means you have to talk to him about an extension next summer if he has a big year.
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I still firmly believe the Wild may dangle Jared Spurgeon this summer. He’s due $3.6 million this upcoming season and is a year away from restricted free agency. He will command a long-term deal at significant dollars the Wild may not be able to (or want to) afford with Matt Dumba emerging. I’m sure the Wild’s very conflicted about this. Besides the fact that he’s one of the Wild’s best puck possession defensemen and a good citizen, the Wild found him, the Wild developed him.
Similarly, there’s a lot to think about with Mikael Granlund (long-term health concerns, how much can he produce in his career), and a lot will depend on contract negotiations. If those talks go off the rails, he could be dangled, too. If either or both of these guys could lure a pure goal scorer or upper echelon center, Fletcher may have to think long and hard about it.
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“Losing the way we did stings to put it mildly. But after beating St. Louis, I don’t think many people were asking us to make massive changes. So you have to be careful changing direction after four games. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t disappointing. We’ve got to figure out what happened and why. But the way the system’s set up for every team, not just ours, it’s not really set up that you can make kneejerk reactions and change directions quickly, nor would we want to. We have good personnel. We just have good personnel that didn’t play very well in one series, there’s no question. We’ll figure out in early June why we didn’t play better, why weren’t we able to take a step? I just want to let some of the emotion die down and be rational.â€
Because so many teams are already crunched up to the cap ceiling heading into the summer, I don’t think it would be easy to trade any of the high-priced vets even if Fletcher wanted to.
And Fletcher said he doesn’t necessarily want to.
“I just want to be careful here,†he said. “For four months everything went right, and then we lost four games. I like a lot of things, but I want to figure out what I don’t like and correct it.
“But I’m not looking to sacrifice multiple pieces this offseason. I’d like to keep as much of the team together as we can. We’ll see how it plays out. But I’m not going in looking to gut this team. I like our players, I like our team. I think we showed for a lot of this year that we’re a darn good hockey team. Certainly we had a bad seven days in May against Chicago, but I don’t have a bunch of complaints with our group from Jan. 15 on.â€
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So [Mike] Reilly will likely go to whatever team he sees the best fit and opportunity. The question is whether Reilly would look at the Wild and see a door open with Ryan Suter, Jonas Brodin and Marco Scandella signed long-term and Dumba looking like he has a long future here.
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It makes total sense for the Wild to go after him because of Reilly’s intelligence, mobility and skill and the Wild’s need for that amongst its prospect pool (documented above in the Iowa section).
But that’s also why Reilly will have several teams calling.
Chicago makes a ton of sense, and frankly, I bet the Hawks will be one of the frontrunners if not the frontrunner. I also hear the Rangers, Kings and Oilers have significant interest.
