Minnesota Wild Prospects: March 2015

Blog Philosophy

The main point of this blog is to provide a one-stop location for fans of the Minnesota Wild to follow their prospects. Of particular note are the embedded statistics for each of the players provided by hockeydb.com or eliteprospects.com. Indeed, the website was first put together so the author could more easily follow prospects that had not yet made the MN Wild roster! Hockeydb.com and eliteprospects.com do not have all of the prospects and their statistics on one page. Other features will be provided on the blog in the future and will likely include statistics of players who are on the Iowa Wild of the AHL or the Orlando Sun Bears of the East Coast Hockey League (ECHL) or the Quad City Mallards of the Central Hockey League (CHL).

Occasional blog entries will also be present on a variety of topics that move beyond prospects, but are certainly limited to hockey. Blog entries aren't always comprehensive and may certainly omit some points/analysis for brevity.

The author doesn't pretend to be an expert nor have the time or ability to watch every Canadian Hockey League, American Hockey League, East Coast Hockey League, etc, game. The author does, however, certainly feel that he knows quite a bit about hockey. Much of his commentary is as a result of reading a lot of news articles from mainstream media such as tsn.ca, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, the St. Paul Pioneer Press, etc... The author does NOT merely repeat what other blogs or others in hockey forums write as he has noticed a lot of moronic opinions out there... The author's views and predictions will sometimes differ than major media reports such as Michael Russo, but he does not have access to professional scouts, players or management officials to make more informed predictions some matters.

Comments -positive or negative, though always civil- on blog entries, or other features are welcome and encouraged.

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Monday, March 30, 2015

About a half dozen games to go and then it's playoff time! It seems the MN Wild will face either Nashville, St. Louis or Anaheim. MN matches better with Nashville but playoffs are a bit unpredictable.

While I'm sure interested in the playoffs, I wonder what will happen this summer with a few roster questions. Of course, success or failure in the playoffs will determine where management might go in that regard.

In terms of goaltending, MN will surely re-sign Dubnyk -it's in everyone's best interest. Backstrom will get bought out and then the question is what MN will do with Kuemper. if they keep him and he continues to fail, he will have not trade value. If they move him this summer -perhaps at the draft- he will have value of some sort... They might want to start fresh with a college or euro free agent and then also draft another prospect. They could -in the interm- sign an established FA to back up Dubnyk. I think they will choose to not re-sign Gustafsson and Curry.

In terms of D, I think they'll move Spurgeon this summer at the draft. I would think they'd get a first round pick -buffalo and edmonton seem to be good candidates.

So, Spurgeon and Kuemper should yield picks. Who else might be moved? Haula?